PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 25, 2011 - HP today announced a suite of new products and services that enable businesses and governments to leverage the power of the cloud while ensuring they meet required levels of security, performance and availability. Cloud computing is an important and growing platform for Instant-On Enterprises, where everything and everyone is connected. Instant-On Enterprises require IT environments that are flexible, automated and secure, and able to quickly adjust to changing demand. While cloud computing delivers benefits such as faster deployment of new services, reduction in IT headcount and a pay-as-you-go model, it has traditionally lacked in areas that enterprises need, such as security, availability and ease of integration. The new HP Hybrid Delivery solutions provide the benefits of enterprise-grade cloud computing, while meeting the specific needs of businesses and governments. "Cloud computing is going mainstream and HP is leading the way," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, HP Enterprise Business. "HP has the enterprise experience, breadth of portfolio and global service delivery organization to lead our clients through this transformation." HP Hybrid Delivery cloud solutions: Cloud for the enterprise HP Enterprise Cloud Services-Compute delivers "private cloud as a service" from HP's state-of-the-art data centers. Governed by specified policies for service, performance, security and privacy, it provides clients with rapidly deployed, secure computing with scalable IT capacity. Built on HP's leadership in Converged Infrastructure and the breadth of HP's software portfolio for automation and management, it delivers all the resources necessary to access a hybrid private cloud. HP CloudSystem is the most complete, integrated system to build, manage and consume services across private, public and hybrid cloud environments. It combines the strength of HP's Converged Infrastructure with the established leadership of HP Cloud Ser
SAN JOSE, Calif., January 25, 2011– Committed to the growing market for cost-effective, capacity-optimized drives, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies ( Hitachi GST ) today introduced its new enterprise-class, 3.5-inch, 3TB Ultrastar 7K3000 drive family – the world's first and only 7,200 RPM drive family rated at 2.0 million hours MTBF and backed by a five-year limited warranty. The new Ultrastar 7K3000 drive family represents the fifth-generation of Hitachi's five-platter mechanical design, which has been stringently designed, tested and field proven for quality and reliability by global server and storage OEMs, as well as the most well known Internet giants worldwide. With millions of five-platter Ultrastar drives shipped over the last three years, Hitachi's field reliability data shows an unprecedented AFR below 0.40 percent, exceeding customer and industry AFR quality specifications for a 7,200 RPM drive. By increasing the MTBF specification to 2.0 million hours, with an AFR 40 percent lower than drives rated 1.2 million hours MTBF, Hitachi enables data center managers to expect reduced failures, improved up-time and lowered TCO when using a large population of Ultrastar 7K3000 hard drives over a period of time. "From early-stage research to design and development to component selection and manufacturing, we have multi-layer processes in place to ensure that our customers receive the highest quality products throughout the entire life of the hard drive program," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST. "Raising our MTBF to 2.0 million hours on our new Ultrastar 7K3000 family reinforces this quality commitment. Our new Ultrastar drives will continue to play an important and growing role in data centers that require 24x7 availability for cloud storage, massive scale out (MSO) data farms, data warehousing, disk-to-disk backup, RAID arrays and more." "The need for greater storage will continue to expand in multiple directions and di
IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2011 - Western Digital(R) (NYSE: WDC) , a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced the availability of its second-generation WD S25 SAS drives (photo) and its latest WD RE SAS 3.5-inch drives for the traditional enterprise market. Shipping now, the 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM, WD S25 with SAS 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer IT professionals ultra-reliable and efficient, high-performance storage with new 450 GB and 600 GB capacities. The WD S25 line, including the previously released 147 GB and 300 GB capacities, is designed for mission-critical server and storage systems. Also shipping now to OEMs, the new 3.5-inch, 7,200 RPM, WD RE SAS with 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer 1 TB and 2 TB capacity points, and represent a key addition to WD's expanding enterprise product portfolio. The WD RE SAS drives mark an important commitment to the expansion of WD's SAS portfolio for high-capacity data center storage, storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage (NAS), direct attach storage (DAS), networked surveillance systems and cloud storage. "Meeting the demands of our customers and IT professionals in the enterprise market is the primary driver of our long-term commitment to SAS drives," said Darwin Kauffman, WD's vice president of enterprise storage solutions. "Our focused strategy in the enterprise continues to ensure that customers who have rewarded WD with their preference of WD drives in other application segments receive the same outstanding values of quality, reliability, performance and availability with WD's SAS drives. It is with that commitment that we are now able to meet a wider set of customer requirements." "Over the past three years, SAS has established itself as the preferred interface for HDDs in servers and enterprise storage systems, representing more than 50 percent of all HDDs shipped for enterprise applications in 2010," said John Rydning, resear
LAS VEGAS - Jan. 5, 2011 - Microsoft Corp. today announced at 2011 International CES that the next version of Windows will support System on a Chip (SoC) architectures, including ARM-based systems from partners NVIDIA Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. On the x86 architecture, Intel Corporation and AMD continue their work on low-power SoC designs that fully support Windows, including support for native x86 applications. SoC architectures will fuel significant innovation across the hardware spectrum when coupled with the depth and breadth of the Windows platform. At today's announcement, Microsoft demonstrated the next version of Windows running on new SoC platforms from Intel running on x86 architecture and from NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments on ARM architecture. The technology demonstration included Windows client support across a range of scenarios, such as hardware-accelerated graphics and media playback, hardware-accelerated Web browsing with the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer, USB device support, printing and other features customers have come to expect from their computing experience. Microsoft Office running natively on ARM was also shown as a demonstration of the potential of Windows platform capabilities on ARM architecture. Windows will continue its industry-leading support across the widest possible set of devices, delivering the breadth and choice that customers demand. Intel and AMD continue to evolve and improve the x86 platforms, including new low-power systems, and advance new designs such as the recently announced 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor family and AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs). NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are joining Microsoft to provide ARM-based designs for the first time. "With today's announcement, we're showing the flexibility and resiliency of Windows through the power of software and a commitment to world-class engineering. We continue to evolve Windows to deliver the funct
REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 17, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of Microsoft Lync, the next generation of communications that connects people in new ways. Starting today, anyone can download a free trial version of Lync at http://www.lync.com, and business customers can purchase Lync beginning Dec. 1. Lync is a single platform that integrates instant messaging, presence, audio, video, webconferencing and voice to bring people together in the ways they communicate best, with one interface that works with the applications businesses know and use today, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange. "Lync delivers on our vision to unify all of the modes of modern business communication, giving people a more collaborative, 'in person' experience with features like HD video, conference recording, and social features like status updates and activity feeds," said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Lync & Speech Group. "In addition to transforming how people communicate, IT departments are also looking to Lync to evolve their infrastructure and enhance or eliminate their traditional PBX systems, saving money and saving time." Customers including The Estee Lauder Companies Inc., Nikon Corp., Marquette University, France Telecom and Herrenknecht AG are deploying Lync 2010 to change the way they communicate, and transforming their businesses while saving money. Nikon, for example, uses Lync with SharePoint and Exchange to increase the company's employee productivity. To date, Nikon has experienced a 30 percent increase in productivity in some areas. "We want to move away from relying on a specific communication tool, like e-mail," said Michiko Noborisaka, general manager of Information System Planning Department at Nikon Corp. "We need capabilities that free people from the constraints of time and place. Our employees should be able to choose the best communications tools for each scenario they