Storage Bytes: Can You Trust This Survey?

Here's a scary thought: Eighty percent of computer users don't understand what hi-speed USB 2.0 technology brings to the market.

OK, it's 80 percent of Comdex Fall visitors who don't understand.

OK, 80 percent of the visitors to IOGEAR's booth at Comdex Fall don't understand it.

IOGEAR folks said they surveyed more than 1,200 attendees at their booth. Hard to believe that Comdex attendees would not know what USB 2.0 is. But maybe these are the same attendees who wait in line for 20 minutes to get a candy bar, or who carry a half-ton of brochures back to the hotel just to throw them away, or who have time to take surveys.

For predicting the future of the IT industry in this economy, I say nothing beats a crystal ball, unless it's a late-night Ouija board session with Anna Kournikova.

But for some odd reason, the folks at Vixel, the Bothell, Wash.-based SAN solution provider, think they know better. So instead of following my advice, they decided to set up a Strategic Advisory Board. They also went out and hired John Runne to act as chairman of the board to help guide the company's strategic business development initiatives and leverage its new technologies into emerging markets.

Runne ran from a position as senior vice president of corporate development, vice president of marketing and executive staff member at McData to do this.

I predict Runne would have more fun if he tried the Ouija board.

Some of the folks at Redmond, Wash.-based Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) have more room to stretch their legs. Well, at least the ones in Denver. That's where they just took occupancy of a new 148,000-square-foot building, giving them almost double the space they had up in the Mile High City used for manufacturing, research and development, test and systems engineering labs, technical support and training activities.

Spectra 64000 and 12000 AIT-3 tape libraries from Spectra Logic, Boulder, Colo., were tested and qualified by EMC as E-Lab Tested, company officials said this week. That means they work with such EMC products as CLARiiON, Connectrix, EDM and other products whose spellings sometimes seem to be the result of an overstimulated imagination.

As long as it works, let them spell it any way they want.

Officials at Anaheim, Calif.-based MTI Technology, in the meantime, said the company's Vivant S200 and Vivant V30 arrays and its Vivant V-Cache application accelerator were verified by Brocade Communications Systems as interoperable with Brocade-based SAN infrastructure.

Brocade also verified the IPStor storage virtualization software from FalconStor Software, Melville, N.Y., as interoperable with Brocade-based multivendor SAN environments.

IPStor was also certified interoperable with QLogic's line of SANbox2 switches and 2Gb SANblade Fibre Channel host bus adapters this week. Or was it the other way around? Can someone tell me if it makes a difference?

Network Appliance this week unveiled a global service and support agreement for Lotus software for enterprise storage customers deploying Lotus Notes on NetApp filers. The program is aimed at simplifying customers' service and support, and improving response time. The global service and support is included in the price of the NetApp appliance and takes effect Immediately.

Some of those Notes might eventually go on Maxtor hard drives. Maxtor is now supplying drives to Network Appliance under an OEM deal signed this week. The drives are slated to go into NetApp's recently announced NearStore product family.

Legato Systems this week started shipping the latest version of Legato AlphaStor, an application that manages the scheduling, tracking and movement of all data storage media regardless of location. The new version 2.0 offers quicker install and configuration times, reduced maintenance time, enhanced tape tracking and reporting capabilities, and a Java-based Web interface.

TrelliSoft, Glen Ellyn, Ill., this week made its StorageAlert/NAS software available through the TrelliSoft Early Adopter Program. The application allows storage administrators to monitor, report on and manage NAS resources. For Network Appliance filers, StorageAlert/NAS also monitors, reports on and manages physical disk information such as capacity and usage, company officials said. Pricing starts at $5,000 per filer.

Officials at Toronto-based DataMirror this week said they can help companies rapidly integrate mainframe data with other enterprise systems across the enterprise. DataMirror provides access to a variety of data structures, including DB2, IMS, VSAM, and sequential files (SAM) on MVS, OS/390 and z/OS.