Storage highlights from around the Web

Computerworld - Teeter tottering over DVD formats

The race over the next wave of optical disc technology is wavering like a seesaw. One week Blu-ray is at the top while HD-DVD wanes, and the next week HD-DVD springs up while Blu-Ray drops to the ground.
This past week was a draw as the head of Toshiba Corp., which supports the HD-DVD standard, predicted there would probably be products for both formats for a limited time until the industry settles on a standard. Talks between Toshiba and Sony Corp., a key supporter of the Blu-ray camp, haven't made progress, and time is running out. Both companies are readying products for release using their own format: Toshiba plans to release HD DVD-based players by the end of the year, and Sony has scheduled a Blu-ray disc drive in its new PlayStation game console for next year.
So how will we users be watching our high definition movies in the next year? Any bettors out there?



Thinking globally

Leslie Wood raises compelling issues on the prospects for global storage networking in this article for the Enterprise Storage Forum. Can global data management be achieved without a new infrastructure? That could be very expensive. Can it be done by enhancing what a company has? Only perhaps by "enlightened" businesses, says one expert. But with the huge need for storage and the demand for greater access, it's clear storage is moving, as this analyst put it, "from being a back office requirement to an integral part of the day-to-day operations of a successful company."


VMware's hand-in-glove fit at EMC

BusinessWeek Online has a good interview with Diane Greene, one of the founders of virtual infrastructure software company VMware, about how it was eventually acquired by EMC in 2004 (See story). In the article, Greene explains how the company started in 1998 and found its niche in virtual-machine technology. The company was planning to go public when "all the sudden there was a tremendous amount of interest in acquiring us." The company wanted to continue to grow and since its products run "on every kind of hardware" it was out of the question to be acquired by a server or an operating systems company. EMC is clearly happy with the purchase. In EMC's first quarter report, VMware booked quarterly revenue of $80 million, a year-over-year increase of 104% (See story).


For something completely different….
Put on your headphones and get ready for a good yuck with this fun video on the "Institute for Backup Trauma" from LiveVault. The video features Monty Python's John Cleese as the institute's director (and a former patient) and has some of the same wacky humor of the British comic troupe. After the video, click around the Web site. I especially liked the "Top 10 Ways to Prevent Backup Trauma" (No. 10: Copy all the data by hand just in case your tape fails.) It also has some clever mentions of former "patients," including Bob Metcalfe, Dan Bricklin and the president and editorial director of our sister pub, Network World, John Gallant.