Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- Xiotech flashes self-healing storage systems at SNW
- Storage Becomes the Center of the Security Storm
- Mimosa Systems and Nexsan Partner to Deliver Turnkey Information…
- SNIA moves proposed data archive standards ahead

Xiotech flashes self-healing storage systems at SNW
Search Storage – Apr 8, 2008
“They’re looking at it from the disk drive up. Most SAN vendors take garden-variety disk drives, but this is a new approach to data protection. The sealed disk DataPac has fewer moving parts. ” Still, Woo said Xiotech has its work cut out for it when it comes to competing with larger storage vendors, such as EMC, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems and NetApp. “Xiotech is a $100 million [annual revenue] company in a space with $9 billion companies like EMC,” he said. “This technology is new, and it’s not fully tested yet. ” Pricing for the Emprise 5000 begins at $20,000.

Storage Becomes the Center of the Security Storm
Enterprise Storage Forum – Apr 8, 2008
— Enterprises are at a “critical intersection,” according to NetApp’s Tim Russell, as they balance the challenge of meeting data protection mandates while simultaneously keeping IT costs down and service levels up. Speaking at a Storage Networking World session on Monday, Russell, vice president and general manager of NetApp’s storage security business unit, warned that the balancing act may only get tougher, since business and regulatory demands are both growing at a rapid clip. As a result, companies must realize that “perimeter” security approaches no longer work — and that they must adopt technologies like data encryption. “The perimeter was once just the firewall, now it is moving closer to the storage environment,” Russell said. “If you’re not doing security there, you’re going to have trouble because you’re all letting more people into your networks and giving them more data access, and security has to be in place. Russell said one recent study found that 75 percent of all data loss incidents are tied to human error. He also said IT is responsible for 30 percent of “inappropriate” data loss — ranging from misplaced memory sticks to failing to fully scrub data from laptops before disposal…
Speaking at a Storage Networking World session on Monday, Russell, vice president and general manager of NetApp’s storage security business unit, warned that the balancing act may only get tougher, since business and regulatory demands are both growing at a rapid clip. As a result, companies must realize that “perimeter” security approaches no longer work — and that they must adopt technologies like data encryption. “The perimeter was once just the firewall, now it is moving closer to the storage environment,” Russell said. “If you’re not doing security there, you’re going to have trouble because you’re all letting more people into your networks and giving them more data access, and security has to be in place. Russell said one recent study found that 75 percent of all data loss incidents are tied to human error. He also said IT is responsible for 30 percent of “inappropriate” data loss — ranging from misplaced memory sticks to failing to fully scrub data from laptops before disposal. Data security was also cited as the top priority for 2008 by IT pros in a recent Enterprise Strategy Group study.

Mimosa Systems and Nexsan Partner to Deliver Turnkey Information…
sys-con.com – Apr 8, 2008
MimosaTM NearPointTM for Microsoft® Exchange Server addresses critical customer requirements for email information archiving, eDiscovery, regulatory compliance, business continuity, and storage optimization. Mimosa NearPoint provides legal search workflow, immediate mailbox and message recovery, disaster recovery, email archiving, and self-service search and access in one solution. Nexsan’s Assureon secure storage architecture delivers a comprehensive array of intelligent features including constant monitoring of file integrity, lifecycle management, file authentication, missing file alerts, and support for remote replication, along with optional file-level encryption. The Nexsan solution provides secure protection and immediate access to archived content at a fraction of the cost of comparable legacy solutions. “Partnering with Nexsan will provide our customers with intelligent, secure, cost-effective information storage solutions. NearPointTM has been integrated with Nexsan technology to archive email, IM and file system content to Assureon devices enforcing retention policies, while providing advanced tools to search and cull-down archived content to quickly locate content relevant to a legal matter,” said Scott Whitney, vice president of product management, Mimosa Systems. “We look forward to working with Nexsan, which has earned its reputation as a leading provider of intelligent, cost-effective, disk-based storage…
Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is the industry’s most comprehensive information management software solution for Microsoft Exchange, unifying email archiving, recovery, and storage management. With options for eDiscovery, file system archiving, employee supervision and disaster recovery, NearPoint ensures litigation readiness and email continuity while leveraging cost-effective disk technologies to optimize email and file system storage growth. Mimosa is a privately held company whose investors include August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, Dot Edu Ventures, JAFCO Ventures, and Mayfield Fund. Mimosa was founded in 2003 and is based in Santa Clara, California, with offices in Germany, the United Kingdom and India. For more information, see.

SNIA moves proposed data archive standards ahead
Computerworld – Apr 8, 2008
“Usually, when a company’s data is archived for 10-plus years, they can’t access it anymore because the format they used to store it in is gone,” Adams said. SNIA chairman Vincent Franceschini said some companies even go as far as to archive servers, applications and data together so they can access information in years to come. Together, the long-term archiving working group’s format and the XAM standard are expected to offer organizations a way to archive data and search it for retrieval in a simple format. The archive working group, called the Long-Term Digital Information Retention and Preservation Technical Working Group, was formed after end users were surveyed by SNIA last year. In that survey, 70% said they were “highly dissatisfied” with their current methods of recovering and interpreting archived digital data more than 50 years old. In addition to the archiving initiatives, SNIA yesterday announced an alliance with…
The SNIA will offer information around best storage practices for achieving more efficient storage infrastructures, including more efficient storage networking technologies. Franceschini said one problem with determining best practices for energy efficiency in the data center, with regards to storage, is that there is very little data around just how much power storage consumes in the average data center. Current figures are anecdotal and range from 5% to 40%, he said. SNIA will be helping to establish some baseline of data for the Green Grid consortium to use to develop a metric to measure data center efficiency.