"WolframAlpha" is starting to generate some anticipation. This seems to be a second attempt to have a "natural language" type search engine. It has been a dream for us to "speak to" a computer system in natural language, and get the required answers , rather than making a choice of keywords and hoping for the best for a web based search engine to throw up.
By the way, the first attempt "start" was an MIT project. Check it out.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Is someone picking up Qlogic?
Poison pills, hostile bids and what not. This indeed seems to be the beginning of consolidation season in the data center market. Whether or not Emulex will accept the $764M offer, Broadcom does have a good complimentary fit with Emulex . Broadcom might have possibly considered Qlogic as well - but may have been leaning towards Emulex for its FC expertise.
This shift presents the question as to who might possibly pick up Qlogic in this consolidation environment. Is Brocade listening....
This shift presents the question as to who might possibly pick up Qlogic in this consolidation environment. Is Brocade listening....
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
GE's Holographic Storage Technology
Optical Holographic Storage by GE research is an interesting new development for data storage as a technology. Holographic storage pertains to the use of the the third dimension ( Height) over and the above the two dimensions ( Length, Breadth) which is used to record data in traditional optical disks. Papers on this subject were written as early as the 1960s.
The technology is "ground breaking" in the traditional sense, in that, there is an order-of-magnitude increase in the efficiency of use. ( 50 GB - 500GB for a given form factor). There is also great promise in adoption since the price per GB for the optical disk market is expected to come down to around 10c /GB from the existing 50c/GB by 2011.
What we have to see about are the format wars this might trigger, after going through the whole HD-DVD and Blue-Ray battles .
In terms of usage , there seems to talks of licensing this to players in the data archival space. We need to wait and see who comes forward here.
The technology is "ground breaking" in the traditional sense, in that, there is an order-of-magnitude increase in the efficiency of use. ( 50 GB - 500GB for a given form factor). There is also great promise in adoption since the price per GB for the optical disk market is expected to come down to around 10c /GB from the existing 50c/GB by 2011.
What we have to see about are the format wars this might trigger, after going through the whole HD-DVD and Blue-Ray battles .
In terms of usage , there seems to talks of licensing this to players in the data archival space. We need to wait and see who comes forward here.
Virtual Storage Appliances
Its interesting to see some of the activity around Virtual Storage Appliances ( If you may call so, I'm using the Left Hand Networks lingo here, Apologies!). Falconstor , StorMagic and LeftHand Networks are bringing in some interesting products in play.
What are these Virtual Storage Appliances?
Traditionally you would use a 3rd party storage appliance(Equallogic, EMC, NetApp et al) to centralise storage in virtual environments. iSCSI is obviously the preferred protocol of choice because of the ease of use and flexibility. (There are some performance issues at very high bandwidths, and there are ways to mitigate this).
The pitch associated with VSA's is that there is no real need to invest in third party storage appliances. You could just use "spare storage" ( which could be DAS) in any of the physical machines that host a bunch of VMs. They would typically be software targets which would work in already virtualized physical machines exposing spare storage in the physical machines to other VMs.
There might really be of value to SMBs who cannot/would not invest in 3rd party storage appliances. From a holistic perspective, VSAs tighten up the case for the use of virtualization even further("Better resource management").
There however might be performance issues associated with VSAs, as of today, as they are predominantly software based. However, for a small IT shop, this might not be of much concern.
What are these Virtual Storage Appliances?
Traditionally you would use a 3rd party storage appliance(Equallogic, EMC, NetApp et al) to centralise storage in virtual environments. iSCSI is obviously the preferred protocol of choice because of the ease of use and flexibility. (There are some performance issues at very high bandwidths, and there are ways to mitigate this).
The pitch associated with VSA's is that there is no real need to invest in third party storage appliances. You could just use "spare storage" ( which could be DAS) in any of the physical machines that host a bunch of VMs. They would typically be software targets which would work in already virtualized physical machines exposing spare storage in the physical machines to other VMs.
There might really be of value to SMBs who cannot/would not invest in 3rd party storage appliances. From a holistic perspective, VSAs tighten up the case for the use of virtualization even further("Better resource management").
There however might be performance issues associated with VSAs, as of today, as they are predominantly software based. However, for a small IT shop, this might not be of much concern.
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