Posted 11/05/09 at 07:55:21 AM by Paul Lilly

During the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Novell unvieled its Novell Pulse, a real-time social and document collaboration platform for enterprises. And the kicker? It works seamlessly with Google Wave, Novell said.

"We designed Google Wave and its open federation protocol to help people collaborate and communicate more efficiently," said Lars Rasmussen, software engineering manager for Google Wave. "We are very excited to see Novell supporting the Google Wave Federation Protocol in their innovative Novell Pulse product."

Novell Pulse gives administrators to ability to provision sign-on and permissions to both keep data secure and make it possible for workers to collaborate on documents online in real-time. Perhaps more importantly, Novell Pulse is one of the first major Wave providers.

Novell said its Pulse platform will be available in the first half of 2010, with a beta scheduled for earlier in the year.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 03:21:08 PM by Bart Salisbury

Western Digital, the world’s second largest hard driver manufacturer and a favorite of the masses, has decided to play with the big boys, announcing their first hard drive for the enterprise storage market.

The enterprise market is made up of big business, which places heavy, mission critical demands on their hard drives. You need some serious hard drive storage if you plan to offer email, web applications, or cloud-computing services. Drives that can handle the stress long-term, with little chance of failure are favored in this market, currently dominated by Seagate and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Western Digital’s first offering is the WD S25, available in 147 Gb and 300 Gb capacities. The drive, which has a 2.5-inch form factor, spins at 10,000 RPMs. It also includes the technologically necessary Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface, either SAS 3 Gb/s or SAS 6 Gb/s. While similar in appearance to Western Digital’s VelociRaptor, it has faster read and write seek times, and a higher MTBF rating of 1.6 million hours.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 07:45:03 AM by Paul Lilly

We first covered Xobni's plugin for Microsoft Outlook in our '20 Essential Tricks Every Outlook Users Needs to Know,' and apparently we weren't the only ones impressed with it. Xobni has notched over 3 million downloads in its belt and has drawn the attention of IT managers interested in deploying the plugin to their employees. They're about to get their wish.

"We're announcing Xobni Enterprise, our second revenue-generating product in three months," Hozer stated in a blog entry. "Xobni Enterprise consists of a web-based admin portal that allows IT administrators to easily control, customize, and deploy Xobni across their organization."

According to Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte, Xobni, or 'Inbox' spelled backwards, is already being used by employees in 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Xobni Enterprise will make it easier for those and other businesses to deploy and manage the plugin through a Web-based portal. Customers will also be able to add their own custom extensions.

Xobni Enterprise is available now "with pricing options to fit the needs of any business."

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Posted 11/03/09 at 07:44:54 AM by Paul Lilly

It was just four months ago that Unisys unveiled its Secure Cloud Solution for public cloud customers, and now the company is gearing up to roll out a private cloud option. Unisys says it's just the latest in a series of aggressive moves to further expand its cloud computing portfolio.

"Unisys is committed to giving clients highly flexible computing services that enable them to move more of their business workload to the cloud," said Rich Marcello, president, Unisys. "We have found that some organizations prefer a private cloud solution for mission-critical applications that use sensitive data so they can retain greater control over their own and their customers' information. Unisys meets that need with the Secure Private Cloud Solution."

Unisys expects to have its Private Cloud Solution available in December starting at $50,000. Then in the springtime, Unisys plans to start shipping a hybrid cloud solution that will tie together the company's private and public offerings.

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Posted 10/30/09 at 08:04:08 AM by Paul Lilly

Xerox on Thursday announced its Enterprise Print Services (EPS), the company's first product aimed at helping enterprises manage documents at home and remote locations, Xerox said.

"By expanding managed print services (MPS) beyond the office walls, organizations have total control over company-wide print spend," said Ken Weilerstein, vice president, research at Gartner. "This is significant because internal and external print shop costs can often exceed office printing spend, so optimizing across all print environments will uncover more sources of cost savings."

Xerox said it will monitor off-site devices with support via phone, email, or Web-based sessions. The outfit will also offer print routing based on an analysis of employee work habits and help setup guidelines to direct documents to the most appropriate device. One scenario in which this would play out is if an employee attempts to send a document to a higher-end printer, they'll receive a message such as "Print to a different printer to save $20."

Companies using Xerox's EPS include The Dow Chemical Company, EMC, Procter & Gamble, and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

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Posted 10/29/09 at 08:04:33 AM by Paul Lilly

Security firm Symantec reported revenue of $1.48 billion for its second fiscal quarter, beating out most analysts' expectations, but down 3 percent from the same quarter one year ago. Earnings were also better than expected, which checked in at $294 million, or $0.36 per share.

Symantec attributed the growth to its consumer business and increased IT spending, which bodes well for the company, considering a recent survey by Intuit Payroll suggested that the majority of SMBs have been spending less on security, even as cybercrime continues to rise.

"We're definitely seeing the U.S. market stabilize," Symantec CEO Enrique Salem noted in an interview on Wednesday. "We've seen China and parts of Asia continue to do well, and we're seeing some weakness in western Europe."

While consumer revenue was up 6 percent year-over-year, Symantec may have a tough time pushing its storage products. According to data from research firms IDC and Gartner, server sales were down roughly 30 percent last quarter.

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Posted 10/21/09 at 10:17:00 AM by Pulkit Chandna

IBM is hoping its latest war cry can somehow pierce the din that Windows 7 seems to be generating. In September, the company struck a partnership with Canonical, the UK-based sponsor of Ubuntu, which resulted in the launch of an Ubuntu-based desktop bundle in Africa.

The cloud- and Ubuntu-based software package, which is part of IBM’s Smart Work Initiative, will soon be debuting in the States. The Ubuntu-based desktop package includes IBM’s free Lotus Symphony productivity suite and Lotus Notes, which is a business email and collaboration solution.

The IBM Client for Smart Work will only arrive in the U.S. in 2010 despite IBM positioning it to rival Windows 7 – on the brink of launch - in the enterprise market. It will be available both as a run-of-the-mill desktop and as a virtualized desktop.

"If a company is a 'Windows shop,' at some point it will need to evaluate the significant costs of migrating its base to Microsoft's next desktop," said Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software. IBM and chums are clearly targeting those businesses that are not too keen on Windows 7.

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Posted 10/13/09 at 02:35:32 PM by Bart Salisbury

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced today the availability of two new 15,000 RPM Ultrastar hard drives for Tier 0/1, mission-critical, enterprise storage applications.

The first is 147 GB Ultrastar C15K147, Hitachi’s first 15,000 RPM 2.5-inch 6 Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive. Hitachi claims the C15K147 has 11 percent higher sequential performance and 23 percent faster seek times when compared to its 10,000 RPM version. The C15K147 uses 50 percent less power than a similar 3.5-inch drive, due to Hitachi’s patented Advanced Power Management technology.

The second is a new 600 GB Ultrastar 15K600, a fourth generation 15,000 RPM 3.5-inch drive with either a 6 Gb/s SAS or 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) interface.  Hitachi claims the 15K600, which also comes in 300 GB and 450 GB versions, to be the largest capacity 15,000 RPM 3.5-inch enterprise drive available.

Both drives come with the Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Enterprise A Security encryption to protect data.

The drives, each with a 5-year warranty, are now shipping. No pricing information was available.

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