Today marks the next step for Xiotech, with a new round of funding and a new CEO at the helm. Alan Atkinson founded WysDM, sold to EMC, and takes over Xiotech and its ISE hardware.

Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?

Coming out of stealth at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, startup EvoStor exemplifies this new virtualization-optimized storage concept. Taking existing storage concepts like scale-out grid and automated storage layout, EvoStor’s offering is designed exclusively to support the VMware vSphere platform.

Solid-state storage performance stalwart, Texas Memory Systems (TMS), has secured access to the patents and source code of SAN virtualization pioneer, Incipient, Inc. TMS will likely use this new technology to cluster and scale their storage offerings, while Incipient remains independent for now.

EMC announced today that they had acquired Kazeon Systems, a standard-bearer in the world of information search and e-discovery. Kazeon had long worked to develop an automatic data classification capability, building an appliance based on open-source and in-house tools. The company’s solution was capable of both scanning file content and indexing it in a database for later search, somewhat unique in the space. Kazeon has also been active in the e-discovery and litigation-readiness space and was top-of-mind for analysts discussing such tools. EMC will likely integrate the Kazeon technology with their SourceOne archiving and discovery platform.

NetApp today announced a predictable step in the transition of their corporate leadership, with Tom Georgens taking over as CEO and long-time Dan Warmenhoven planning retirement after a short stint as Executive Chairman. Today’s move follows Georgens’ promotion to President and COO in January of 2008, and is part of a remarkably smooth and clear transition of power for the enterprise storage company. NetApp founder, Dave Hitz, broke the news, chronicling the transition in his blog.

EMC’s Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) was one of the most welcome annoucements made during the Symmetrix V-Max introduction. It would be a significant modernization of EMC’s Symmetrix line, and would be one of the first unique features of the Symmetrix V-Max line. But many, including me, were disappointed to learn in May that FAST […]

Although I will resist the obvious and hackneyed cloud metaphors and similies, it is painfully clear that the field of cloud computing remains ill-defined. As we (hopefully) near the apex of hype, just about every IT company is clamoring to be part of the cloud market. From data center build-out to storage arrays to server […]

As cloud computing becomes more mainstream, investors will start looking to get in on the act. With that in mind, a friend and I began discussing which public companies were getting into the cloud computing market and to what extent. I have put together the following list, and encourage comments, suggestions, and contributions.

Western Digital announced this morning the world’s first “1 TB mobile hard drive!” But although the news is great for storage-hungry folks looking for a portable external drive, it doesn’t quite mark a sea change in the storage industry since this drive cannot be used in (most) laptops.

Not For Laptops
As we’ve discussed before, modern laptops […]