UK data centres are facing a ‘data crunch’ unless more than £1billion is invested in this critical IT infrastructure over the next 12 months according to Alex Rabbetts, Managing Director of data centre specialists, Migration Solutions.

SGI, a provider of HPC and data center solutions, today announced the release of SGI InfiniteStorage 5000, a RAID storage system that combines leading edge hardware with a choice of host interfaces and drive technologies in a powerful external storage platform. SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is SGI’s first storage system to employ 6Gb/s SAS technology.

Symantec announced enhancements to Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster File System and Veritas Cluster Server, the heterogeneous storage management and high availability solutions for UNIX, Linux and Windows environments.

Additionally, near instantaneous recovery of applications is now possible with Veritas Cluster File System through tight integration with Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2 –allowing for “fast failover of structured information and near linear scalability.”

Data Robotics announced DroboElite, the first iSCSI SAN storage that manages itself. DroboElite is a business class data storage solution that brings the company’s BeyondRAID technology to small and medium businesses.

DroboElite delivers automated capacity expansion and one-click single- or dual-drive redundancy for data protection for Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

The new system extends the number of Smart Volumes – Data Robotics’ unique thin provisioning that pulls storage from a common pool of drives – so that users can now create up to 255 virtual storage volumes.

Compuware, software and consulting provider, announced it has completed its acquisition of Gomez, one of the two major forces in web application monitoring services that has a leading SaaS solution for desktop/laptop web application monitoring.

“This is a very interesting and potentially game changing move in both the end user experience monitoring and the application performance management (APM) markets,” Jean-Pierre Garbani wrote on the Forrester Blog for Vendor Strategy Professionals.

Verizon is expanding its encryption service to cover documents and e-mail. Encrypted Docs enables the user to encrypt files and folders and determine who can access, read and write to the file or folder, enforcing privacy policies.
According to the company, e-mail encryption and newly added data encryption services will help prevent privacy leaks, unauthorized access and help keep documents private in case of theft or loss.

Xyratex has announced support for Hitachi GST’s enterprise-class 7,200 RPM 2TB offering, the Ultrastar A7K2000 hard disk drive. The company claims new Hitachi’s drive have been fully integrated into Xyratex’s family of storage systems. The Ultrastar A7K2000 will be available for Xyratex products over the next quarter.

DataCore Software, the provider of storage virtualisation, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, announced that it has teamed up with Citrix Systems to distribute a free to try, downloadable, DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance. The company also released a Citrix StorageLink adapter to integrate its storage virtualisation solutions with Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Digital Realty Trust, the wholesale datacenter provider, has launched a new offering called POD Architecture Services(SM) to provide design and construction services to companies that own or want to own their own datacenter facility, and would like to leverage Digital Realty Trust's datacenter expertise and resources.

Seagate reported a loss of USD $81 million on revenue of $2.35 billion for the second quarter of this year.
Despite the poor results, the company said it is seeing signs that the storage market is improving and it is making progress toward returning to sustained GAAP profitability as soon as possible.

Three units of HSBC Group have been fined GBP 3.185 million (USD $5.2 million) by Britain's financial regulator for failing to protect consumer data from loss or theft.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said all three firms had been warned by HSBC Group Insurance's compliance team about the need for robust data security controls in July 2007.

EMC has reported a slight increase in revenue last quarter and provided an optimistic forecast for the second half of the year.
The announcement came as it completed the USD $2.1 billion acquisition of data deduplication specialist Data Domain.

EMC Corporation has finally overcome rival NetApp and succeeded with its bid to buy data deduplication leader Data Domain at a price of USD $2.1 billion.
The acceptance of the final offer comes after a six-week bidding war and will raise questions about whether EMC overpaid for Data Domain - and what NetApp will do now.

Freecom has launched an external HDD that requires the use of a keycard to get access to its data.
Admission to the Hard Drive Secure is controlled by an RFID card which has to be swiped over the HDD to lock it - and again to unlock it.

Intel is to implement the projected doubling of its SSD capacities earlier than expected - possibly as soon as next month.
The current X18-M and X25-M solid-state drives (SSDs) use a 50nm process and have 80GB and 160GB capacities with 2-bit multi-level cell (MLC) technology.

The Japanese firm Green-House has announced a new line of 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch SSDs that use PATA IDE interface.
Both lines are available with capacities ranging from 16GB to 128GB.

Varisys has added to its range of storage products with two new high performance boards intended for use in harsh environments.
The VTS2 also provides high-density storage in standard form factors. It is now available in a conduction-cooled assembly that provides VME users the ability to add mass storage into a rugged system.

WD has unveiled its newly redesigned My Book World Edition II dual- drive network storage system in capacities of up to 4 TB.
The company said the double protection of two Mirrored (RAID 1) drives and continuous backup software, makes the storage system extra-safe for users to back up and store the data and digital media.

Separate backup data center locations are not being used by many companies to provide the complete data-recovery system, according to research.
Instead they are relying on failover to separate storage arrays and servers within the same physical building.

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, has introduced unique capabilities across software and services to enable customers to reclaim underutilised storage capacity and increase the return on their assets.
This announcement highlights the company’s strategic Global Services capabilities to further extend the economic and optimisation benefits customers can achieve leveraging Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning technology.

Internet SCSI (iSCSI) can provide a number of advantages in enterprise storage area network (SAN) infrastructures—offering similar scalability, availability, and manageability as Fibre Channel in a cost-effective way, and enabling IT administrators to work with standard, familiar Ethernet components rather than specialized Fibre Channel equipment. iSCSI-capable Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series iSCSI SAN arrays, Dell PowerVault™ storage systems, and Dell/EMC storage systems can provide a simplified, scalable way to implement iSCSI SANs.The underlying technologies—the iSCSI protocol, Ethernet, and TCP/IP transport—help provide a well-known, mature, and cost-effective security infrastructure for iSCSI SANs. Key areas of security that effective iSCSI security strategies must address include data-at-rest (DAR) and data-in-flight (DIF) security; authentication, authorization, and data coherence; and defenses against passive, active, and operational attacks. Key best practices for securing iSCSI SANs include isolating the iSCSI domain, consolidating and securing management portals, disabling unused switch and router features, using access control lists for authorization, using Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) and IP Security (IPsec) when appropriate, and defining a practical and secure key management strategy.Strong security does not necessarily mean expensive security. By taking advantage of the maturity of Ethernet and TCP/IP technologies that serve as the basis for iSCSI networking and following key iSCSI best practices, administrators can cost-effectively implement robust, secure iSCSI SANs as part of a comprehensive enterprise security strategy.

Aress Software has launched an online backup solution which gives 1GB of free space and also comes with an unlimited storage option.
Called BackupandShare.com, the service is aimed at business and individual users, and has an ability to schedule backup for PCs and Macs.

Storage of consumer electronics could be boosted by as much as 2TB with the arrival of a new generation of memory cards.
That's the expectation of the SD Association, which suggest Secure Digital memory cards based on the new SDXC (extended capacity) specification could be out as early as next year.

The bidding war for Data Domain stepped up this week after NetApp raised the stakes with rival EMC by making a new cash and stock offer of USD $1.9 billion.
This came two days after EMC's offer of USD $30 per share in a deal worth about USD $1.8 billion - around 20 per cent over the original USD $1.5 billion offered last month by NetApp.

Phoenix International has unveiled its new VS1-250-SSD Serial Attache SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA (SATA) based VME data storage plug-in blade.
The VS1-250-SSD delivers high capacity, high performance data storage - with burst data transfer rate to 300MB/sec and sustained data transfer to 120MB/sec.