Drew Robb

The pairing of server blades and storage seems to be all the rage these days. IBM, for one, recently released a few products pairing the two technologies: an embedded switch module co-developed by McData and QLogic; the LS20 blade with iSCSI capabilities; and a SANRAD blade version of its Switch-V iSCSI SAN switch based on […]

‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet laureate Robert Frost in 1915. ”Don’t fence me in,” echoed Cole Porter 20 years later, in a song recorded by everyone from Bing Crosby to Willie Nelson. There is something that just doesn’t feel right about living in a Dilbert-style cubicle world. Fortunately, the growth […]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is designed to improve efficiency in healthcare though the standardization of electronic data interchange, as well as to provide measures to make sure that patient data is kept secure. A major threat to HIPAA compliance is posed by the fact that anyone can walk away with up […]

You can’t be too careful, these days, when you are handling other people’s data. Leaks are exposed ruthlessly in the press, shareholder confidence is eroded and customers wonder if they should move their business elsewhere. That’s why more and more firms are turning to encryption technology. Payformance Corp. of Jacksonville, FL., for example, offers software […]

There has been a lot of debate over the past year about how storage virtualization should be done and who has the best technology. Some say it should be done in the switch, some prefer the array, others insist that it must be contained within an appliance, and a growing number believe it belongs in […]

Business Processing Outsourcing may be the latest buzzword, but there is one company that made the sale more than half a century ago. Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) delivered its first pay checks in 1949 and now collects $8.5 billion annually, managing payroll and benefits for nearly 600,000 customers. Even when someone else cuts the […]

Data Domain of Palo Alto, Calif. is one of a new breed of storage startups that are aggressively campaigning against tape-based backups. In fact, the company gives away car bumper stickers saying, ”Tape Sucks, Move On”. Its marquee product, the DD400 enterprise series falls loosely in the ”Capacity Optimized Storage” (COS) category. The basic idea […]

Warriors have long used emblems, uniforms and tattoos to physically identify themselves to their compatriots. Secret passwords were in use long before the first person logged in at a keyboard. Today, the world of enterprise security is increasingly incorporating biometric identifiers as an additional weapon within the security arsenal. International Biometric Group, a New York […]

Chevron Corp. of Houston, Texas, must have one of the largest storage environments around. It has swollen to nearly 1,800 TB and is growing at a rate of 2TB a day. The company utilizes storage directly to drive the bottom line. ”The modern organization marches on storage, like the soldier marches on his stomach,” says […]

Companies looking to cut their IT costs need to look beyond initial outlays and take a hard look at their support costs. CIOs and administrators, for instance, might not notice how much it costs to support remote workers. Sending a technician to an offsite location can get expensive, as can dealing with a remote worker […]