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Longhorn to Support RSS

Longhorn will have built-in support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication), providing users with another way to consume information on the Internet, Microsoft announced last week. The next release of the Windows operating system, which is due by the holiday shopping season of 2006, will support a range of RSS features in the Internet Explorer Web browser that will let users easily discover RSS "feeds" and subscribe to them as easily as adding a Web site to their "bookmarks." "RSS is key to how people will use the Internet in the future," says Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Longhorn browsing and RSS. In addition to RSS, Longhorn will include a Microsoft development called Simple List Extensions, which a set of enhancements to help Web sites publish lists of content that users can subscribe to, such as top 10 songs from a music site or a wish list from an online retailer. Microsoft says Simple List Extensions will enhance RSS by capturing information critical to representing lists, such as ordering of items, and also allow publishers to embed useful information about the list itself. Microsoft made the announcement in Seattle at last week's Gnomedex 5.0, a conference that focuses on RSS, blogging, podcasting, and other new media models.

Oracle Hires Ex-Microsoft CFO Maffei as President

Oracle has hired former Microsoft chief financial officer Greg Maffei to be its new president and CFO. Maffei, 45, will have responsibility for Oracle's legal department, human resources, manufacturing and distribution, and global real estate when he takes his new position starting in July, the Redwood Shores, California, company says. Maffei held a variety of positions during his seven-year tenure at Microsoft, which lasted until 2000, including vice president of corporate development and treasurer. From 1999 to February 2002, Maffei also served as Chairman of Expedia, which Microsoft took public in November 1999. He will receive an annual salary of $800,000, plus an $800,000 bonus for his first year of employment, and an option to buy up to 4 million stock options at a price of $12.55.

Symantec Shareholders Clear Acquisition of Veritas

Shareholders of security software vendor Symantec have approved the acquisition of data management software vendor Veritas, paving the way for a completion of the deal next week. The acquisition will create the world's fourth largest software company, behind Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. When Symantec and Veritas announced the deal last December, many viewed it as a strategy to defend against Microsoft, which is moving forward with plans to introduce new antivirus and backup and recovery products. John Thompson, Symantec's chairman and chief executive, denies that's the motivation, instead saying it's about expanding its reach into enterprise shops. Meanwhile, Symantec has gone ahead with two new product launches, including Symantec Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) 6.5, which brings improvements aimed at streamlining regulatory compliance, and a beta version of the Symantec Security Information Manager 9500 Series appliance, which works with Symantec's ESM software to ensure that users are updated with the latest security intelligence updates, including automated security alerts, known vulnerabilities, safeguards, and attack signatures.

Microsoft Targets Telecommunications Sector with New Program

Microsoft furthered its strategy to reorganize its company around industry verticals this week when it announced a new alliance program targeting telecommunications providers. The new program, which is called the Communications Sector Alliance Program (CSAP), enables telecommunication providers to use $100-million worth of development and testing equipment at the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center in Redmond, Washington. Bell Canada, Canada's leading telecommunications provider, and Swisscom Mobile, Switzerland's largest mobile operator, have already signed up to take advantage of the program. Bell Canada is selling the Productivity Suite, which includes DSL connectivity, data backup, security, technical support, and subscriptions to Office 2003 and Office Live Meeting 2005 services. Swisscom Mobile, meanwhile, plans to deliver a new service called Mobile Unlimited that offers fast, secure access to e-mail, the Internet, and company records via cellular phones.

Tandberg Unveils 1U LTO Tape Autoloader

Do you have a use for an LTO autoloader that occupies only 1U, or 1.75 inches, of space in an industry standard rack? Tandberg Data, which recently announced what it claims is the densest rack-mount LTO autoloader in the business, is betting that you do. The LTO StorageLoader features a half-height LTO-2 tape drive that can hold up to eight data cartridges across two removable magazines, giving the device a native storage capacity of 1.6 TB (3.2 TB compressed) and a native transfer rate of 24 MB per second (or 48 MB per second compressed). Users can interact with the SCSI-based StorageLoader through its LCD screen and four-button keypad, or through a Web-based interface; a barcode reader is optional. "For small to medium businesses, our new StorageLoader will cost less than a LTO-3 full-height drive and store four times the capacity, while providing integrated automated backup and manageability features," says Ken Cruden, Tandberg Data's chief operating officer. To sweeten the pot, Tandberg is offering eight free LTO2 cartridges with the purchase of a new StorageLoader.

IDC Says Disk Storage Sales Grew Modestly in Q1

Market researcher IDC says sales for disk storage continue to grow modestly. In its analysis of the external disk array market for the first quarter of 2001, IDC reckons that overall market revenue for external disk arrays grew by 6.7 percent to $3.77 billion, while the total market for disk arrays (including internal units sold for servers) grew by 6 percent to $5.47 billion. The aggregate capacity sold across all kinds of disk arrays continues to explode, with a total of 409 petabytes peddled in the quarter, up 58.6 percent.

EMC was the dominant supplier of disk arrays, with $808 million in sales in the first quarter. Up 12.2 percent. Hewlett-Packard came in second with $668 million in sales and growth of only 6.2 percent, followed by IBM's $435 million (up 9.2 percent), Hitachi's $345 million (up only 1.9 percent), and Dell's $291 million (up 29.2 percent). Other vendors in the diverse disk array market accounted for $1.22 billion in sales, but their share of the pie shrank by a fraction of a percent.

When you add in internal disk arrays, HP is the dominant supplier, with $1.23 billion in sales in the quarter, up 4.2 percent, followed by IBM, with $1.02 billion in sales, up 4 percent. EMC's numbers stay the same because it does not sell its own servers, but Dell's numbers are bumped up a bit to $444 million across all disk array types, an increase of 26.2 percent compared to last year. At current growth rates (provided they persist), Dell will surpass EMC in the overall disk market within three years, and in four years will be jockeying for the top spot with HP. Other disk array makers accounted for $1.61 billion in sales in the quarter, up 2.2 percent and accounting for a little less than a third of all disk array sales worldwide.

Storix Releases Backup/Restore for Mac OS X and Windows with System Backup Administrator 5.2

Data archiving and system backup software maker Storix announced this week that it has ported its backup/restore features of its System Backup Administrator software to the Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms. The core System Backup Administrator software was written for IBM's AIX Unix variant a number of years ago and was recently ported to the open source Linux operating system. These AIX and Linux platforms run SBA--which can backup and restore files for the purposes of archiving, or go into disaster recovery mode and restore a working AIX or Linux operating system image on a remote machine--even if the underlying hardware (such as disks and controllers) is different on the new machine from the old machine for that operating system image. With SBA 5.2, Storix is allowing a Linux-based SBA server to backup and restore data that is stored on Windows or Mac OS X clients or servers; it does not provide disaster recovery (by which Storix means restoring working operating systems) to these platforms. This backup/restore functionality for Windows and OS X is not available with AIX-based servers at this time.

In addition to the new platform support, SBA 5.2 also includes optional 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit data encryption on backed-up files, which would come in pretty handy these days at the big banks that keep losing credit card data. A base, two-node network configuration of SBA 5.2 costs $1,200 on Linux/X86 platforms, $2,100 on Linux/Power platforms, and $2,400 on AIX/Power platforms. The Windows and OS X backup/restore feature costs $79 per backed up device (be it a desktop or server). The data encryption feature costs $269.