The first step in any data center efficiency project is to figure out the problem. After all, analyst Katherine Austin says in a GigaOM Pro report (subscription required), “You can’t control what you don’t monitor.” And one of the chief ways that startups are addressing the […] Read more »
Data centers are a critical component of many businesses these days, but because of the amount of electricity they consume, they are extremely expensive to run. However, a great deal can be done both to cut costs and reduce their environmental footprint, simply by making them more energy efficient. Online technologies and applications are creating skyrocketing demand for new data centers, and most enterprises are now seeking “greener” solutions, both in their own facilities, and in the facilities with which they do business. This report looks at innovations in green data center design and identifies key players — from major data center operators to startups solving specific issues — leading the charge. Read more »
Dell has signed partnership agreements with Brocade and Scalent to answer the threat posed by Cisco’s servers and the need to create a computing environment that can handle virtualized servers, networking and storage. The idea is to create what most call a unified computing fabric to […] Read more »
The last decade has seen tremendous evolution and innovation in storage array technology — from the introduction of thin provisioning and ultra-wide data striping to storage virtualization in various forms of deployment, along with new generations of disk arrays, creative data retention and tiering. Many of the technologies introduced have caused significant disruption in the storage market and brought new and creative value propositions to corporate data centers the world over, lowering both storage array purchase costs and the extended cost of managing them. Many of the new innovations have enabled IT enterprises to reduce power and cooling costs, consolidate data centers and floor space, and repurpose storage assets and extend their useful life. However, even with all the advancements in storage technology, there are still gaps that need to be filled — such as in the areas of security and data de-duplication. This report looks at current key players in the storage market, highlights market drivers and the technology gaps that present opportunities for companies in the space, and forecasts the relative potential of key players going forward. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today’s news that Apple sells almost 70 percent of songs online had us wondering about other industry giants. Some companies, whether because they make a great product, or were first to a particular industry, or some other reason entirely, make goods that manage to secure a […] Read more »
Less than two months after the Department of Energy gave Tesla Motors the green light for $465 million in low-interest loans, the electric car startup has identified its first project for the funds: setting up a powertrain assembly facility and new headquarters at the Stanford Research […] Read more »
It seems technology vendors just love the movies. Nvidia today said its graphics chips played a role in compiling and restoring footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing — a feat of image processing. Also today, Analog Devices, a maker of micro electromechanical machines (MEMs), said […] Read more »
Notable Observation: “In the context of software, the word Enterprise has now officially come to mean software that sucks. Enterprise Software hit the nadir of suckitude at the launch of Enjoy SAP. This is like the American Dental Association launching Enjoy Root Canal. SAP is certainly […] Read more »
The storage industry is on the cusp of the biggest structural change since networked storage began to substitute for direct-attached storage a decade ago. Despite being one of the fastest growing technology sectors in terms of capacity, the economics for many participants are deteriorating. Several major technology shifts will radically redefine the economics of the industry leading to slimmer margins for all but the most innovative, software-driven players. In essence, the future of storage is about storage software that increasingly absorbs intelligence that used to be hard-wired in a proprietary storage controller and array, which in turn is increasingly becoming an abundant pool of commodity disks. It is the pace of this transition that is at issue. In this report, we show how the different customer segments and associated workloads will evolve at different paces, and examine the associated opportunities for both incumbents and new market entrants. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After a slow start, IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, has become established as a legitimate pay TV alternative to satellite and cable. Now that several IPTV operators have each attracted more than 2 million subscribers, IPTV has begun to attract the attention of media companies and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
I’ve long been skeptical of netbooks, but clearly, I need to reassess my elitist attitude toward them. I wasn’t a fan partially because I don’t like using them and partially because I didn’t believe that consumers would really go for a machine that seems to call […] Read more »
The Android Developers Blog offers a highly detailed overview of soft keyboard input methods today. It’s mainly geared towards software developers, of course, but end users get a nice understanding of the various IME or Input Method Editors in the Android mobile OS. Although the focus […] Read more »
