Storage Effect

Security breaches of sensitive customer information don’t follow logic

Steve Duplessie is concerned for Hannaford, a Maine retailer suffering from bad press related to credit card data theft from their customers. 

He points out that they followed Visa security guidelines perfectly, yet are getting as much or more grief than TJMaxx, who he thinks did “everything wrong.” 

You’re right Steve, it’s not fair.  And that’s the point!  Information has gotten to be so valuable to people and businesses that it’s no longer good enough to reactively “follow the process” in keeping it safe.  Businesses need to get in front of the curve or risk subjecting themselves to the unpredictable wrath of society.

Data security needs to rise to the top of IT priorities.  Companies of all sizes need guidance and solutions that let them be proactive in protecting their customers.

IBM acquires XIV: storage technology for a Web 2.0 world 

Moshe Yanai, the man who invented the Symmetrix (and therefore EMC) decades ago, has created a game-changing storage solution at XIV, his 5 year-old  startup.  IBM thinks so too, it seems. They announced today that they had acquired the company.

Enterprise Strategy Group was big on XIV even before IBM announced they would acquire them.  Who couldn’t like rebuilding a 1 TB drive in less than 30 minutes?  An innovative massively parallel storage architecture creates all kinds of rule-busting capabilities (near-infinite scalability, high performance with SATA drives) that are only available today in massive, custom-built internet data centers.

Equallogic understands the power of manageability

Steve Duplessie’s post on Dell’s Equallogic grab includes a great example of the insatiable demand for storage that’s really only limited by manageability.

Business data storage is becoming less and less about the bytes and all about how easy it is to use them.  Equallogic has had to fight its way kicking and screaming into a fiercely competitive market, and they’ve succeeded because they understood this fact and stayed true to it with their products.