Servers / Desktop Notes archives
By Jennifer Mears, NetworkWorld.com
July 25, 2006
The move to new technologies like multicore processors, server virtualization and grid computing bring the prospects of more efficient data centers. But they also bring with them some challenges. Not the least of which is how vendors will charge for...
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July 20, 2006
Intel reported its second quarter financials this week and things weren't exactly bright. It posted profits of $885 million for the second quarter. That’s less than half of the $2 billion it earned during the same period last year. Intel...
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July 18, 2006
After repeated delays, Intel finally has begun shipping its dual-core Itanium processor, code-named Montecito. As one analyst put it, the release “almost makes [Itanium] competitive with some of the other chips that have been out there for a year or...
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July 12, 2006
VMware announced today that its free server virtualization product, VMware Server, is now generally available. The product, which is basically its low-end GSX Server, was first made free in a beta program that began this past February. Since then the...
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July 11, 2006
Sun used its quarterly news event this week to unveil a bunch of new Opteron-based products, including a scalable high-end system and a blade server. Welcome Sun back to the blade game. And, according to some analysts, welcome Sun back...
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July 06, 2006
Intel has had a tough couple of years, but it’s back with a vengeance now that it has launched its new Xeon, code-named "Woodcrest." Analysts say Woodcrest is likely what Intel needs to take back some of the market share...
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July 05, 2006
Google is usually pretty quiet about the goings-on inside its data centers, so it’s always interesting to hear any tidbits about the operations of the company’s computer systems....
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June 29, 2006
While much of the server virtualization talk these days centers around x86 platforms, HP this week announced some enhancements to its partitioning technology for Itanium-based Integrity servers. Specifically, HP released a pre-configured package that includes virtualization technology designed for Oracle...
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June 28, 2006
Dell is rolling out a new high-level service package for customers that gives some pretty cool insight into how service calls are being handled....
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June 27, 2006
The rumors were true. Intel today announced that it is selling its communications and application processor business unit to Marvell Technology Group. The price tag is $600 million....
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June 20, 2006
You’ve got lots more platforms to choose from today when it comes to picking the right server. A big reason is that x86 systems are getting more powerful and feature rich....
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June 14, 2006
HP today unveiled its next generation blade platform with a whole lot of fanfare. Anne Livermore, executive vice president of HP’s technology solutions group, called the new design “a breakthrough architecture” during a Web cast announcing the BladeSystem c-Class. Well,...
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June 13, 2006
Word is that Intel will begin shipping its next-generation Xeon processor, code-named Woodcrest, on June 26. That means Woodcrest-running servers won’t be far behind. Should make the summer an interesting time for server buyers....
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June 08, 2006
AMD continues to eat into Intel’s market share and the AMD customers I talk to just can’t get over how much more energy efficient the Opteron-based servers are. So it’s not surprising to see Intel focusing on energy efficiency and...
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June 06, 2006
If you’re like most IT managers, you’re starting to look more closely at how much energy servers consume and what level of heat they give off. The power/performance measurement is playing a bigger role in server buying decisions. But what...
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June 01, 2006
New CEO Jonathan Schwartz is getting down to business at Sun. The company announced this week that its board of directors has signed off on a company plan to return to profitability that will result in as many as 5,000...
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May 31, 2006
Both Red Hat and Novell are preparing to release Linux distributions that include the open source Xen virtualization capabilities baked in. But they’re also looking at incorporating another open source approach to slicing and dicing physical servers....
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May 30, 2006
There is no question now that Sun understands the importance of standards-based systems and open source software. Sun takes another step forward in that realm this week announcing official Linux support for its new Sparc-based T1 servers, code-named Niagara....
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May 25, 2006
ClearCube created the market for PC blades when it rolled out its first product in 2000. Then, the focus was on the hardware. And the hardware was pretty inflexible: one stripped down client device connecting to the brains of the...
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May 23, 2006
So Dell finally succumbed to the pressure. While discussing its lackluster financials last week, the server maker also announced that it would soon be shipping Opteron-based servers....
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May 18, 2006
Nemertes Research polled dozens of IT executives earlier this year to find out what is top of mind for today’s data center customers. Here are the four big trends the survey uncovered: consolidation, growth, availability and operational efficiency....
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May 17, 2006
If you’re in the middle of consolidating your data center or planning a data center move, HP can relate. HP today announced it plans to consolidate its existing 85 data centers around the globe into six larger facilities – two...
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May 16, 2006
Moving a data center is no easy feat – especially when it’s supporting a 24/7 Web storefront and more than three dozen retail stores. But Boscov’s Department Stores did it....
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May 11, 2006
While we wait for the official release of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 this summer, Novell is giving us a taste of what’s to come. Novell announced the availability of SuSE Linux 10.1 today....
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May 11, 2006
Unisys has introduced the latest addition to its ES7000 server line. It also introduced a new business continuity service that provides data protection at a low price point, the company claims....
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May 09, 2006
Call it the modern mainframe. While some naysayers may question the relevance of the mainframe in today’s data centers, IBM continues to push the big iron. Just this week, Big Blue announced a number of updates to its most reliable...
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May 04, 2006
Sun is stepping up its battle with Azul. The systems vendor this week filed suit in U.S. District Court in California asking that Azul Systems be forced to stop infringing on Sun patents and that it be ordered to pay...
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May 03, 2006
AMD is pulling out the big guns when it comes to pushing the energy efficiency of its Opteron processor. This week, the chipmaker unveiled a huge billboard in Times Square that ticks off the dollars that it says are being...
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May 02, 2006
Software giant SAP is throwing its support behind Virtual Iron, which builds software for creating and managing virtual servers. While the companies didn’t say how much money SAP is contributing, observers say it’s around $3.5 million....
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April 26, 2006
AMD is celebrating the third anniversary of its Opteron processor with some pretty good looking numbers. The chip maker has been steadily raising its profile in the enterprise market and it’s showing in its expanding market share....
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April 25, 2006
After 22 years at the helm of Sun, Scott McNealy is calling it quits. He’s not leaving the company, just handing over responsibility. Jonathan Schwartz, who was Sun’s president and COO, is taking over as CEO....
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April 24, 2006
After July 1 the servers – and other IT hardware – you buy most likely will be environmentally friendly. That’s because a European Union directive called RoHS is going into effect and it’s causing changes in how products are manufactured...
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April 21, 2006
Suns says the speed bump for its UltraSparc IV+ processor won’t come this quarter as originally planned. At a company event in Tokyo, David Yen, executive vice president of Sun’s Scalable Systems Group, said that the 1.8 GHz version of...
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April 20, 2006
Power and cooling is at the top of the list when it comes to data center concerns. All major systems vendors have been working on ways to make powerful systems that run cooler. This week, AMD announced a plan to...
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April 19, 2006
Univa, the company founded by the guys who created the open source Globus Toolkit for designing and managing grids, has rolled out its first product....
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April 18, 2006
Oracle is snapping up open source software companies. According to a story in the Financial Times this week, it also looked at buying a Linux distributor -- namely, Novell....
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April 17, 2006
Heat and energy issues are becoming increasingly vexing for IT managers with today’s smaller, higher-performing servers. All of the major server vendors are tackling the issue. Just last week, Sun combined forces with the Environmental Protection Agency to start work...
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April 14, 2006
If you’re deploying blade servers – or thinking about it – you should keep an eye on the goings on in Garden Grove, Calif., next week. That’s where this year’s Server Blade Summit will be held....
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April 12, 2006
Sun today introduced the entry level version of its new server line based on the multicore UltraSparc T1 processor. The Sun Fire T1000 complements the Sun Fire T2000 that the server maker rolled out late last year....
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April 11, 2006
I return from vacation to some pretty interesting news: JBoss’ decision to join forces with Red Hat. It’s a good move. And one that should benefit enterprise customers....
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April 07, 2006
Interesting story this week by my colleague Ann Bednarz on Goodwill Industries influence on the development of an open source portal product form Liferay....
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April 06, 2006
Network World author Joel Snyder takes a look at a subject near and dear to to anyone running a data center – who do you let and how do you control access to corporate resources. In this case he takes...
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March 31, 2006
IBM this week announced a new pricing plan for customers running its middleware apps on multicore servers from Sun. The UltraSparc T1 servers, codenamed Niagara, were introduced by Sun in December. They include eight processing cores on a single piece...
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March 29, 2006
Bowdoin College has got virtualization fever. The small liberal arts school in Brunswick, Maine, is one of a growing number of organizations that is finding real benefits in virtualizing industry standard servers....
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March 28, 2006
SuSE CTO Juergen Geck is parting ways with Novell. Geck is just the latest in a long line of SuSE executives who have said goodbye to Novell since it acquired the Linux distributor in 2004....
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March 23, 2006
More than a year after laying out the grand vision, Sun finally has hit the switch on a new grid service that offers enterprise buyers – and anyone with a PayPal account – access to compute cycles on demand. It’s...
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March 22, 2006
Red hat this week took the wraps off the latest version of its free Fedora Linux distribution. It’s this community-backed project where the features in Red Hat’s enterprise distribution are taken for a test drive....
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March 21, 2006
I think it’s been a couple years now that we’ve been talking about how grid computing is making its way from high performance computing in science and academia into business data centers. It’s not surprising since grids offer the hardware...
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March 20, 2006
HP on Monday unveiled the latest update to its Itanium-based Integrity line of servers. It also announced updates to its HP-UX 11i operating system, which provide some pretty cool capabilities to share workloads across geographically distributed servers....
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March 17, 2006
Azul Systems must be doing something right. Why else would Sun be spending time and money threatening the small start-up with litigation?...
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March 15, 2006
This year will be a good one for companies that want to start really taking advantage of virtualization in Linux environments. While VMware has been offering virtualization technology on x86 servers for years, the major Linux distributors are preparing to...
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March 14, 2006
Looking for a blade server to run demanding database applications? Or want a hefty – yet space saving – platform for consolidating servers? Fujitsu has got something for you. This week the computer maker announced a new 8-way blade system....
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March 13, 2006
Now that Novell has introduced its business-user-friendly Linux desktop, we’ll probably start seeing more interest and activity around bringing the open source operating system to client devices. You might even hear employees start asking for it....
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March 10, 2006
Linux has become a mainstream option on servers, but its march on to the desktop has been a slow one. Novell is hoping the next release of its Linux desktop will help speed things up. SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which...
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March 09, 2006
Caris & Company research analyst Mark Stahlman apparently believes that Sun CEO Scott McNealy may be getting ready to part ways with Sun. I guess McNealy has said that he would stay on at Sun only as long as there...
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March 08, 2006
Every now and then we get emails from readers wondering why we don’t place a larger focus on Apple. We do write about Apple, but for the most part Macs just haven’t made large inroads into the enterprise (except, of...
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March 07, 2006
Noticed all the buzz around Itanium lately? Even as Intel continues to, as one analyst put it, “slip and slide” when it comes to the troubled processor, its largest backers, HP and Intel, are beating the rah-rah Itanium drum....
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March 06, 2006
Remember the days when thousands of square feet of data center space sat idle? Well not any more. There’s a data center building boom brewing. It’s similar to what happened in the late 1990s when service providers and real estate...
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March 03, 2006
As Intel prepares for its big developer forum next week the Web is atwitter with talk that Internet powerhouse Google is in AMD’s camp when it comes to choosing low-end servers....
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March 02, 2006
When it comes to merging HP-UX, HP’s version of Unix, with Sun’s Solaris, Sun refuses to give up. Sun has been beating that drum since the beginning of the year when HP announced that it would support Solaris across its...
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March 01, 2006
Virtualization is the buzzword of the moment in enterprise data centers. There are dozens of companies claiming to offer services in the virtualization arena. So, it’s not a surprise if you’re a bit confused about what products or services are...
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February 28, 2006
If there was any thought that EMC might spin out VMware, Joe Tucci put that idea to rest at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium being held in Phoenix this week....
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February 27, 2006
I’m in sunny Phoenix for the day to check out the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium. Company execs are taking their turns in the hot seat (not unlike our very own Network World hot seat) as Goldman Sachs analysts throw...
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February 24, 2006
Yes, you may know Chinese computer company Lenovo because of its acquisition of IBM’s PC division last year. But, if you’re like me, when you hear the name ThinkPad, you probably still think IBM....
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February 23, 2006
Forgotten about the whole SCO/IBM brouhaha? Or, better yet, have you been waiting on the edge of your seat for the next big development? Well, here it is....
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February 22, 2006
Corporations are consolidating more workloads on low-end servers that increasingly are offering more processing oomph....
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February 21, 2006
Virtualization and security are key themes playing through our New Data Center supplement this week...
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February 17, 2006
After a long week of serious IT projects, I figured it was time for a laugh. Check out our story this week about all those wacky requests you and your staff get from end users....
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February 16, 2006
HP reported its first quarter results and the news was good. I guess Mark Hurd’s restructuring plan is bearing fruit....
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February 15, 2006
Like any startup, XenSource is going through its share of growing pains and management changes are just part and parcel of that. Today, the company announced that ex-Veritas executive and former venture capitalist Peter Levine is taking the reins....
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February 14, 2006
Sun is opening up the specs to its new UltraSparc T1 servers in a bid to drive interest in its so-called “CoolThreads” multithreading technology. The idea is to position the eight-core servers as a great platform not just for Solaris...
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February 13, 2006
Analysts say the latest updates to SWsoft’s virtualization software brings it more in line with offerings from the likes of VMware....
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February 10, 2006
A recent survey by Robert Frances Group highlights the increasing focus on power and cooling issues in enterprise data centers. RFG says that while power and cooling may not be at the top of every IT manager’s list of concerns...
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February 09, 2006
Wayne Inouye came to Gateway in 2004 with plans to revitalize the struggling computer maker. At the time, Gateway executives were hopeful that the acquisition of eMachines, where Inouye was CEO, would help return it to profitability. It did just...
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February 08, 2006
IBM is making its big BladeCenter announcements today, but Big Blue also took time this week to focus on its Power processor....
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February 07, 2006
Get ready for x86 processors to have the same kind of innate partitioning capabilities as higher-end Unix chips. Both Intel and AMD say they’ll be shipping chips with virtualization features baked-in sometime this year....
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February 06, 2006
XenSource, the company formed to foster the development of the Xen open source virtualization technology and sell subscription and support services for it, is shaking things up at the top...
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February 03, 2006
As companies focus on simplifying their data centers it seems like those charged with managing these facilities are facing increasingly complex challenges. Issues such as heat, space and power all are becoming more pressing as increasingly powerful systems are packed...
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February 02, 2006
Every week, my colleague Deni Connor expounds on all things server-related in her twice-weekly server newsletter. Check out one of her recent issues here....
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February 01, 2006
Word is that IBM is set to revamp its BladeCenter and introduce its first blade based on the PowerPC 970MP. The buzz is that the news will be announced at an event IBM is holding in New York City next...
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January 31, 2006
IBM this week announced that it is refreshing its midrange i5 line of servers with faster Power5+ processors and an updated i5/OS operating system designed to better support Linux, AIX and Windows on a single system....
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January 30, 2006
Things are getting hot in today's data centers with smaller servers handling bigger workloads. So what are vendors doing to help you keep things cool?...
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January 27, 2006
Itanium sure has taken its share of beatings over the last few years. But supporters of the 64-bit chip continue to give the processor new hope....
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January 26, 2006
While there still may be questions about whether Sun Microsystems will be able to turn itself around, one thing is for sure: the company isn’t boring. And Greg Papadopoulos, executive vice president and CTO of Sun, has the same thing...
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January 23, 2006
IBM’s iSeries continues plugging away as a highly reliable workhorse in dozens of enterprise data centers. Last year, IBM made a commitment to the iSeries to the tune of $1 billion. It also named a new general manager....
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January 20, 2006
Server virtualization is getting a lot of attention these days and so is Linux, as the open source operating system becomes a platform for key business applications. So it’s not surprising to see a focus on integrating virtualization into Linux....
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January 18, 2006
Heat and power issues in the data center are becoming more important as IT infrastructure becomes more and more dense. Two events in the next couple weeks address those issues head-on....
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January 17, 2006
So, the idea of running cheaper, open source software in some areas of your data center sounds appealing, but you don’t want to rip out Windows and deploy Linux? Well, you don’t have to....
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January 13, 2006
Virtualization stands to be one of the hottest technologies for 2006. IDC is planning a Virtualization Forum in February that looks like it’s worth checking out....
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January 11, 2006
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Sun CEO Scott McNealy held a rah-rah get-together for employees this week, talking up the close partnership between the two companies and their plans for 2006....
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January 09, 2006
It’s that time when we all try to figure out what’s going to be hot in the year ahead. Check out our package of stories highlighting the technologies we consider to be burning the brightest in 2006....
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January 03, 2006
So, did 2005 include enough server benchmarks for you? Are you looking forward to more in 2006? I’m just wondering what vendor-generated benchmarks really mean for corporate buyers....
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December 22, 2005
If we had to pick just one theme to describe the goings-on in your data center in 2006, virtualization would probably be a good bet. From servers to storage to desktops, it’s all about carving up physical systems into multiple...
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December 20, 2005
Sun is getting into the Christmas mood a little early, hoping to stuff your IT stocking with its new Niagara-based servers....
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December 16, 2005
A new report by Gabriel Consulting Group found that Sun Microsystems, which still leads the Unix market in terms of the number of systems installed, lags rivals IBM and HP when it comes to customer satisfaction....
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December 15, 2005
Systems vendors continue to court the open source community. This week was a particularly earnest one for IBM....
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December 12, 2005
There’s no question that virtualization has moved beyond hype for x86 systems. Sure it’s true that slicing and dicing physical systems into multiple, isolated containers is something that has its roots in the very high end on mainframes and Unix...
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December 05, 2005
Sun is continuing its transformation into the Red Hat of systems vendors with plans to open source virtually all of its software....
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December 05, 2005
Stratus Technologies has been offering Intel-based fault-tolerant servers running Linux for sometime....
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December 05, 2005
Look for Azul Systems at this week's Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas....
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November 28, 2005
IDC just released its third quarter numbers for 2005 and said that end user spending on servers grew 8% to $12.5 billion in the third quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago....
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November 28, 2005
A big buzz in the server market during the past week or so has been that lone AMD-holdout Dell is flirting with the possibility of selling machines based on AMD's processors....
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November 28, 2005
Open source options just keep getting better....
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November 21, 2005
The Unix market has been anything but stellar of late even as server vendors continue to push their Risc products....
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November 21, 2005
Server virtualization specialist SWsoft rolled out its Windows-based product this summer and last week updated the software with support for 64-bit environments....
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November 14, 2005
IBM of late has taken a strong interest in this whole idea of PC blades, where the intelligence of PCs are centralized and secured away from user’s desktops....
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November 14, 2005
Rackspace Managed Hosting is a San Antonio-based service provider that gives its customers two platform options: servers using Intel Xeon processors or servers using AMD Opteron processors....
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November 07, 2005
Intel has been watching its back the past year or so as AMD makes strides with Opteron, its challenger to Xeon. Things are really heating up now as Intel alters its processor roadmap and startups and end users cozy up...
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November 07, 2005
Speaking of the Opteron factor, at least one financial analyst points to Dell's reluctance to embrace Opteron as one reason why Dell's numbers are slipping. "We believe the current Opteron processor offers several advantages - performance, price, and heat generation...
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November 07, 2005
Interested in the use of open source in government and educational institutions? Check out the 2005 Open Source Forum in Minnesota. The forum is being held in conjunction with the 24th annual Minnesota Government Information Technology Symposium Dec. 13-15 at...
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October 31, 2005
IBM made a pretty big deal out of its new hosted PC blade offering that it is rolling out with VMware and Citrix....
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October 31, 2005
Intel is expected to launch its dual-core Xeons for multi-processor servers this week. It introduced its first dual-core Xeons - for one- and two-way servers - in early October. IBM, Dell and Gateway area all rolling out servers based on...
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October 31, 2005
Virtual Iron is expanding its virtualization software to support Opteron-based servers and is also fine tuning it for IBM BladeCenter systems. Virtual Iron launched earlier this year with a unique approach to server virtualization: Instead of simply slicing up single...
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October 24, 2005
Sun Microsystems is focused on growing its business in a lot of areas. Not the least of which is in the low-end server market....
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October 24, 2005
ClearCube pretty much created the market for blade PCs when it rolled out its first product in 2000....
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October 24, 2005
Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor was slow to take off and is facing additional pressure from x86 processors that now support 64-bit environments....
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October 10, 2005
AMD introduced its dual-core Opteron processor in April, putting the pressure once again on Intel to bring its Xeons up to speed....
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October 10, 2005
It used to be that when IT managers wanted high-performance, advanced management features and reliability, they had to look to the high-end and put applications on big, expensive servers. Not anymore....
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September 12, 2005
Sun's long-awaited Galaxy servers make their debut this week....
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September 12, 2005
In 2003, Stratus Technologies rolled out its lower cost Intel-based fault tolerant systems, opening up the highly available servers to cost conscious IT managers....
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September 12, 2005
If there was any doubt that grid computing is getting increased interest from enterprise IT buyers, the fact that IDG World Expo (a sister company of Network World) is planning a grid-focused conference may put those to rest....
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August 29, 2005
IDC just released its quarterly server market share data and it shows that the server market is continuing to grow....
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August 29, 2005
Microsoft executives say they "agonized" over the decision about whether to make their upcoming virtual server product free....
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August 29, 2005
If you paid attention to last week's Intel Developer Forum, you know that dual-core and multi-core chips are the new way of the world....
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August 22, 2005
We all suspected it and now Intel has confirmed it: the chipmaker rushed to roll out its dual-core processor in the hope of beating AMD to the punch....
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August 22, 2005
If you're bringing blades into your data center, it's likely because you're looking to streamline things....
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August 08, 2005
The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo kicks off this week in San Francisco (see our LinuxWorld news page). It's no big surprise that the show will focus on security, the use of open source applications on top of Linux, virtualization with...
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August 08, 2005
Virtual Iron is a pretty cool start-up. It's doing some interesting things with virtualization. Like competitors such as VMware, Microsoft and SWsoft, it slices and dices single physical servers in multiple virtual machines. But it adds a twist that analysts...
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July 25, 2005
IBM is holding a "significant" event in New York City Tuesday. While Big Blue is mum on the details, word is they will be refreshing their high-end z990 mainframe....
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July 25, 2005
HP employees are on the chopping block again. CEO Mark Hurd, whose taste for cost-cutting and focus on the bottom line played a large part in him landing his job at HP earlier this year, took a few more steps...
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July 25, 2005
It came as a surprise to many when Interex closed its doors last week....
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July 11, 2005
I guess we all should have known that a Nov. 1 trial date for the SCO vs. IBM case would be too good to be true....
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July 05, 2005
Since Dell got back in the blade game last year with its PowerEdge 1855, it has been focusing on making blades a mainstream part of the data center....
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July 05, 2005
After running in betas and limited releases for months, SWsoft’s server virtualization software is now generally available for Windows environments....
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June 27, 2005
There's been a lot of talk about enterprise grids lately....
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June 27, 2005
IBM is stepping up its virtualization offerings with technology focused on moving applications among systems....
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June 20, 2005
The industry is moving to multi-core platforms and analysts predict that all servers shipped will contain at least two cores on each piece of silicon by the end of next year....
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June 20, 2005
The International Supercomputer Conference opens in Heidelberg, Germany, on Tuesday....
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June 13, 2005
As application performance demands grow, data centers require more computing power in a smaller box so that more servers can fit in a rack....
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June 13, 2005
Stratus Technologies is expanding its line of fault tolerant systems with the ftServer 4600 that is built on a custom designed chipset that the company says boosts performance by 66% over its predecessor, the ftServer 5600....
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June 13, 2005
When you think of getting processing capacity on demand, you typically think of Unix and mainframes....
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June 13, 2005
New data center technologies such as server virtualization, grid computing and multicore processors are bringing new flexibility to IT environments....
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June 06, 2005
Apple is trading in the IBM PowerPC chips that power its computers for Intel silicon....
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May 30, 2005
It's full steam ahead for HP’s move to standardize on the Intel platform....
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May 30, 2005
High profile customers are talking up Linux and its readiness to support heavy-duty applications in the financial, travel and airline industries....
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May 23, 2005
Open source continues to make strides in enterprise data centers. But today what the open source community offers as far as free directory software is somewhat limited....
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May 23, 2005
A startup whose founders have their roots in the telecom industry is promising a new breed of server management that doesn’t involve the headaches associated with deploying software agents across your server farm....
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May 23, 2005
Fujitsu has boosted the speed of some of its PrimePower Unix servers....
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May 09, 2005
IBM took the lead with 32-/64-bit Opteron, becoming the first major systems vendor to offer a product when it introduced its eServer 325 in July of 2003....
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May 09, 2005
Egenera, a pioneer in the blade server market, is also a frontrunner in this whole virtualization, utility computing phenomenon....
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April 25, 2005
The dual-core x86 era has begun. AMD last week officially launched its dual-core Opterons and HP, IBM and Sun all announced that they would be shipping products in the next few months....
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April 25, 2005
Network World and AFCOM, the organization for data center professionals, have singled out Oracle as a leader when it comes to data center innovation....
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April 25, 2005
If you’re like most data center managers these days you’re taking a closer look at open source software....
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April 18, 2005
Dual core has been around for some time in Unix machines, but this week x86 gets its dual-core wings....
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April 18, 2005
How system resources connect with each other and share data is becoming increasingly important as IT managers incorporate virtualization, blades, grids and clustering into their data centers....
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April 18, 2005
The earnings news was less than encouraging last week as companies like IBM and Sun announced results that failed to meet expectations....
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March 30, 2005
HP this week announced that former NCR chief Mark Hurd is taking the reins at HP. Hurd's appointment is effective April 1, when he also will join HP's board of directors. Hurd replaces Carly Fiorina, who was ousted in February...
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March 21, 2005
The content delivery market has been marred over the last few years by the constant legal back and forth between its major players (<>)....
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March 21, 2005
IBM’s iSeries has kind of a fad following - loyal users who would never turn away from the systems. But the servers haven’t been embraced widely....
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March 21, 2005
Black Duck Software is making a name for itself by rolling out products that help end users sort through open source licenses to make sure there are no conflicts....
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March 07, 2005
There wasn’t much as far as hard, shipping product news at the Intel Developer Forum, but there was a lot of interesting talk about what IT managers can expect from Intel-based systems down the road....
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March 07, 2005
The blade server market is growing fast, but there is just one show that’s focused strictly on these compact computing machines: the Server Blade Summit....
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March 07, 2005
Network World is partnering with AFCOM, an organization dedicated to data center professionals, to give some of you out there a pat on the back....
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February 28, 2005
IBM wants you to know it has no plans to step away from its venerable iSeries midmarket server....
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February 28, 2005
IBM can thank strong sales of its Power5 based systems for giving it the lead in the worldwide server market....
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February 28, 2005
HP last week rolled out storage management software that it says will put an end to isolated islands of servers and storage in enterprise data centers....
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February 14, 2005
Carly Fiorina’s five and a half year reign at HP is over....
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February 14, 2005
It’s been a year or so now that enterprise IT managers have been taking a closer look at grid technology as a way to boost performance and get better utilization of data center resources....
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February 14, 2005
What are your plans for Linux in your data center? Where ever you are with Linux projects, turn your attention to Boston this week....
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February 07, 2005
Sun last week jumped with both feet into the utility computing arena, announcing its Sun Grid utilities that the company says let users plug in and get computing power and storage just like they would get electricity from a socket....
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February 07, 2005
It’s clear blades are getting a closer look from IT managers who like the compact nature of the systems....
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January 31, 2005
A year ago the big buzzword was utility computing. Today, grid computing seems to be the term on everybody’s lips....
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January 31, 2005
Sun finally made good on its promise and last week announced that it was releasing its Solaris operating system to the open source community....
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January 24, 2005
These are good days for enterprise customers as systems vendors move to be more open and flexible when it comes to hardware and software....
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January 24, 2005
Bill Worley, the man behind Itanium, is hoping to inject some excitement into the Itanium marketplace....
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January 24, 2005
IBM last week took aim at key problems associated with today’s blade servers: too much power and too much heat....
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January 24, 2005
Intel last week said that it was pushing up the timeline to put its virtualization technology - codenamed Vanderpool -- into its PC chips....
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January 18, 2005
HP this week shines the spotlight on its Itanium 2-based Integrity servers....
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January 18, 2005
Server virtualization specialist VMware is bringing its expertise to the world of PC management....
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January 14, 2005
While things seemed to be looking up for Sun Microsystems, a gloomy atmosphere preceded its earnings announcement on Thursday....
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December 20, 2004
In the early 1990s, HP and Intel teamed up to design a new 64-bit processor that was supposed to revolutionize computing and replace the 32-bit Xeon chip....
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December 20, 2004
The blade server market continues to grow at a rapid pace. IDC says blade shipments were up 44% in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago....
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December 20, 2004
Speaking of blades - IBM in September opened up the design specifications for its BladeCenter products in an effort to encourage third-party hardware vendors to build products specifically for Big Blue’s blades....
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December 13, 2004
Things are starting to get moving around a new serial I/O technology designed to take the place of your traditional PCI bus....
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December 13, 2004
One of the ideas behind blades is to be able to pack a bunch of these extra-slim servers into your data center and then cluster the systems with software to get a pool of computing resources....
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December 06, 2004
Data center heat output and power consumption are becoming increasingly important issues as vendors continue to pack more processing power into smaller spaces....
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December 06, 2004
HP’s rivals have taken shots at the server maker, claiming the company that is transitioning to an Intel-only platform is neglecting its Unix business....
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December 06, 2004
The general industry consensus lately has been that Sun Microsystems may finally be on the upswing....
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November 29, 2004
Polyserve is expected to announce this week a software clustering product for Oracle databases running on Linux. In the Oracle HA (High Availability) Solution for Linux, servers are clustered with storage arrays. If one server fails, other servers in the...
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October 18, 2004
IBM last week announced two new servers equipped with as many as 64 POWER5 processors....
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September 20, 2004
Stratus this week is introducing a new entry-level fault tolerant server for businesses that require business continuity. The ftServer W Series 2300 server gives 99.999% uptime and is designed for use in distribution centers, warehouses, branch offices and retail chains....
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September 14, 2004
Microsoft last week stepped into the server virtualization market with the introduction of Virtual Server 2005....
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September 06, 2004
IBM and Intel last week announced what they call an open blade server specification intended to encourage vendors to manufacture IBM BladeCenter compatible products....
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August 30, 2004
Server virtualization is heating up with several new resources. Microsoft is rumored to have released its Virtual Server 2005 to manufacturing. The company who acquired Connectix last year has had an early release beta of Virtual Server available for a...
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August 23, 2004
Since introducing its first Power5 based servers in May, IBM has been on a tear adding to the lineup. First Big Blue introduced the Power5-based i5 servers and then in July took the wraps off Power5-based p5s....
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August 23, 2004
An SAP AG order processing and supply-chain system that caused the bulk of the problems for HP’s Enterprise Servers and Storage group last quarter is still being massaged. HP executives told customers at the HP World user conference last week...
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August 23, 2004
IT managers looking to stay on the cutting edge of where Intel-based technology - and technology in general - is heading should mark their calendars for the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The fall IDF will be held Sept....
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August 16, 2004
HP last week reported a 9% jump in revenue for the third quarter, climbing to $18.89 billion from the $17.35 billion it posted in the same quarter a year ago. The growth was attributed largely to strong performance in its...
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August 16, 2004
HP’s annual user conference gets underway on Monday in Chicago. Organizers Encompass and Interex expect 7,000 business customers and partners to attend the event that runs all this week and will include detailed information about HP’s strategies and technologies. HP...
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August 16, 2004
AFCOM, an organization of data center managers, MIS directors, CIOS and other IS professionals, is gearing up for its fall conference. The Fall ’04 Data Center World Conference and Expo will be held in Atlanta October 3-6....
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August 09, 2004
Server vendors are taking an interesting route to expanding their customer reach: They’re auctioning off equipment on eBay. Sun has made the biggest splash of late, announcing that its newest Opteron server, the V40z, would be up for bids on...
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August 09, 2004
Still looking for proof that Linux is moving into the mainstream? Consider Unisys’ announcement last week that it would support Linux on its high-end ES7000 servers....
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August 09, 2004
While most shows promise some level of real world information from IT executives like you, an upcoming data center management conference is designed to do nothing but that....
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August 02, 2004
It’s widely agreed upon in industry circles that the success of AMD’s Opteron microprocessor, which runs both 32- and 64-bit applications equally well, was what pushed Intel to finally show its hand....
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August 02, 2004
The 64-bit enabled Xeons are here for dual processor servers. Business customers can take their pick from systems that will be rolled out Monday by IBM, HP and Dell. Here’s a run down....
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August 02, 2004
LinuxWorld convenes this week in San Francisco with big vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun topping the list of companies planning announcements....
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July 26, 2004
Last week I wrote about some of the hidden costs associated with new, multicore chips that are starting to take over the server landscape. Today, Sun, HP and IBM all have dual-core systems that put two processors on a single...
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July 26, 2004
Sun last week reported a profit of $795 million, or 24 cents per share, in its fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $1.039 billion, or 32 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. thanks in large...
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July 23, 2004
Sure, you could say Sun’s history with x86 systems has been wishy-washy at best. But users interested in these low-priced systems should be taking a closer look at Sun these days. Last November, the server maker announced a wide-ranging partnership...
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July 19, 2004
IBM upped the ante in the Unix server market last week when it finally took the wraps off new systems based on its Power5 chip. The new servers, which now take on the moniker p5 to fall in line with...
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July 19, 2004
A couple of weeks ago I sat down with John Fowler, Sun’s former software CTO, who is now head of the newly formed Network Systems group at the company. It was a wide ranging discussion in which Fowler touched on...
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July 
