Compaq announced this week it has plotted a course for its future storage products that will take it into the storage over the Internet protocol arena as well as lead to the release of a series of hardware and software products targeted at both small business and Fortune 500 firms.
Fujitsu Computer Products, America has announced it will phase out production and sales of 3.5-inch desktop disk drives over the next two years to focus on 2.5-inch drives targeted for use in servers, storage arrays, mobile devices and other non-PC applications.
Banks that rebuild their foundations on e-commerce through technology alliances will be the survivors in a period of increased mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry, according to a report.The report also predicts new technology and competition over the next six years will leave the marketplace with half as many players.
An e-commerce joint venture backed by Microsoft and Accenture has set up EMC to provide storage services for Windows 2000, SQL Server and Exchange customers.
Once again blaming the slowdown in IT spending brought on by softening economy, EMC today warned that its financial results will fall well short of expectations for the second straight quarter.
While it's still more than five years away from happening, the Internet will eventually act as the plumbing to connect vast oceans of cheap disk storage within companies, Gartner analysts predicted here yesterday.
Citigroup yesterday said it will offer its corporate customers the ability to route bills electronically to consumers through an online service backed by three large financial services competitors.
IBM has announced that it has begun mass-producing a magnetic coating technology that will eventually allow a quadrupling of the amount of data that can be stored on a single hard disk.
In what was described as its first bona fide layoffs, storage industry leader EMC today announced plans to cut its workforce by 4 per cent through the dismissal of about 1,100 employees during the next few weeks.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sided with Amazon.com in a dispute with two privacy groups that accused the online retailer of deceiving its customers by changing its privacy policy to permit disclosure of personal information to third parties.
Struggling software company Novell last week reported that it will lay off 5 per cent of its employees after posting a second-quarter loss that it blamed on write-downs, slower IT spending and the company's transition from selling proprietary networking software to products that link the technology of different vendors.
While EMC denies that rivals in the data storage market such as IBM and Hitachi Data Systems are gaining ground, analysts say increased competition created by a slumping economy is forcing vendors to be more aggressive deal makers.
Two of the top three vendors of Digital Data Storage (DDS) tape say they will no longer develop future lines of the popular data backup product, while the third producer said it has no "current" plans to continue its line.
The days when users would buy new storage technology based on things such as improved data backup speeds or immediate cost savings have passed due to the softening economy. Now, companies are focusing on total cost of ownership and the long-term returns that storage investments can bring.
Microsoft is warning users about a security hole in Internet Explorer that could be used to force the Web browser to automatically open HTML e-mail attachments, potentially enabling attacks in which malicious hackers could delete data from PCs or cause other types of damage.
