EMC Corp. has announced its next generation mainframe virtual tape library (VTL). Designed for use in IBM z/OS and Unisys OS2200 environments, EMC says the new DLm6000 is the industry's fastest mainframe VTL with 2x the performance of its nearest competitor. By leveraging the latest advances in EMC Data Domain and EMC VNX storage systems, the company says the DLm6000 can address the full range of mainframe tape workloads with a single, consolidated all-disk system and will enable mainframe users to minimize their storage and replication costs and improve their disaster recovery capabilities. By matching different workloads to the most appropriate storage, the DLm6000 maximizes system performance and accelerates data retrievals and backup and recovery times. The new EMC DLm6000 will be available in September, 2011.

McAfee's recently published analysis of a 5-year targeted cyber attack operation, which it dubbed Operation Shady RAT, should serve as notice for just how sophisticated attackers are becoming, warns Bill Roth, CMO of LogLogic, an IT data management company.

Symantec Corp. has announced the availability of Enterprise Vault 10, the new version of its email and content archiving software that now features Symantec's data loss prevention technology. In addition, the latest version of Enterprise Vault 10 offers the ability to archive all social media interactions. "We have seen companies get used to the idea of archiving their email, files, instant messaging, and SharePoint sites, and this is really the next wave," Trevor Daughney, senior manager of product marketing for Enterprise Vault, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

IBM and Security First Corp., a data high availability and security company, have announced a joint development agreement aimed at delivering increased performance, security, and high data availability to storage and cloud-based computing customers.

Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management software, has introduced Vormetric Data Security for SAP, a comprehensive solution that protects data in SAP environments with transparent, high-performance encryption. According to Gretchen Hellman, vice president of product management at Vormetric, SAP modules often contain sensitive data that is under the jurisdiction of the growing numbers of internal governance mandates and external regulations, and so require advanced protection from insider abuse and external breaches.

Oracle has introduced the Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Rack to offer customers a cost-effective way to add storage to an Oracle Exadata Database Machine. "There are customers, earlier Exadata Database Machine customers, that have now started to fill up the disks that they have on the Database Machine and they are starting to look for ways to expand their storage capacity, and so this is going to be really welcome for them," says Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle.

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, is launching the OAUG Educational Series 2011, a virtual learning series offered to OAUG members from Aug. 8-19, featuring the most popular presentations from the COLLABORATE 11 - OAUG Forum.

CA Technologies' Mainframe Security Management products have met the requirements of Common Criteria, an independent security certification recognized by governments in more than 26 countries, including the United States. "CA ACF2 and CA Top Secret are widely used by enterprise level customers, both government and commercial customers, and it's incumbent on us to be diligent in keeping the products current with the most rigorous global security standards," Mark Combs, distinguished senior vice president, mainframe at CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management solutions, and Fortrex Technologies, Inc., a provider of services and systems for IT security, operational risk, and compliance, have formed a strategic partnership to address the needs of organizations facing regulatory compliance data protection requirements, including the HITECH Act and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). With this partnership, Fortrex, a certified assessor for the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) Common Security Framework (CSF) and PCI DSS Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) company, will offer Vormetric Data Security. "To have a partnership between an encryption vendor and a certified assessor means that the assessor has reviewed the technology and made sure that all of the features within the technology fit all the detailed requirements under the regulations - and there are quite a few," Gretchen Hellman, vice president of marketing and product management, Vormetric, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Melissa Data Corp, a developer of data quality and address management solutions, has announced that its Address Check Web Service is now available on Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket for Microsoft's Data Quality Services (or any client that embeds the API). Address Check provides real-time address verification and standardization for U.S. and Canadian addresses. Users, from both small and large businesses, can easily add Address Check to their applications to save money on postage and reduce undeliverable mail and shipments by cleaning up inaccurate, incomplete, or undeliverable addresses at point of entry. "It is basically on demand. As they need a service they can use Microsoft's Data Quality Services to link up to the marketplace and pick and choose the types of services almost on an à la carte type of menu," Greg Brown, director of marketing for Melissa Data, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Dataguise, a provider of enterprise security intelligence solutions, has announced a high performing database cloning privacy solution to support test, development and analytic uses in data warehousing environments. According to Dataguise, its sensitive data discovery and masking solutions complement NetApp's solution for rapid cloning of large Oracle data sets to enable efficient and secure distribution when running on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) platform.

Oracle has introduced the Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Rack to offer customers a cost-effective way to add storage to an Oracle Exadata Database Machine. "There are customers, earlier Exadata Database Machine customers, that have now started to fill up the disks that they have on the Database Machine and they are starting to look for ways to expand their storage capacity, and so this is going to be really welcome for them," says Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle.

Symantec Corp. announced that privately-held Clearwell Systems Inc., is now part of Symantec. The acquisition agreement between Symantec and Clearwell was announced on May19, 2011. According to Symantec, the acquisition of Clearwell brings together leading archiving, backup and e-discovery offerings to provide customers with a comprehensive information management solution.

Oracle has agreed to acquire Pillar Data Systems, a provider of scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems. The acquisition will help Oracle deliver a complete line of storage products that runs Oracle software faster and more efficiently, the company said. Oracle president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle, followed up the announcement with a webcast last week in which they elaborated on Oracle's storage strategy and the importance of the capabilities that Pillar adds. They were joined by Phil Bullinger, senior vice president, Storage, at Oracle.

As the economy shifts to expansion mode, and businesses start hiring again, a familiar challenge is rearing its head. Companies are scrambling to find the talent needed to effectively run, maintain, and expand their technology platforms. This is not a new problem by any means, but this time around, it is taking on a greater urgency, as just about every organization relies on information technology to be competitive and responsive to growth opportunities. A new survey of 376 employers finds a majority depend on the educational sector - universities and colleges - to provide key IT skills, often in conjunction with their own internal training efforts. However, few of the executives and managers hiring out of colleges are entirely satisfied with the readiness of graduates.

Oracle has agreed to acquire Pillar Data Systems, a provider of scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems. The acquisition will help Oracle deliver a complete line of storage products that runs Oracle software faster and more efficiently, the company said. Oracle president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle, followed up the announcement with a webcast last week in which they elaborated on Oracle's storage strategy and the importance of the capabilities that Pillar adds. They were joined by Phil Bullinger, senior vice president, Storage, at Oracle.

Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management software, has introduced Vormetric Data Security for SAP, a comprehensive solution that protects data in SAP environments with transparent, high-performance encryption. According to Gretchen Hellman, vice president of product management at Vormetric, SAP modules often contain sensitive data that is under the jurisdiction of the growing numbers of internal governance mandates and external regulations, and so require advanced protection from insider abuse and external breaches. The solution can encrypt, protect and control access to both structured as well as unstructured data - including SAP reports, archives and database extracts. "It is comprehensive protection for SAP data," says Hellman.

Dataguise, a provider of enterprise data privacy solutions, has introduced its latest generation of database security solutions for sensitive data discovery, masking and sensitive data risk management. DgSuite 3.5 provides proactive risk-based enterprise security intelligence and solutions for transparently securing personally identifiable information (PII), payment card industry (PCI) data, information covered by HIPAA regulations and other sensitive data located in structured database repositories across distributed enterprise environments. The new release features the new DgDashboard for actionable intelligence that enables executives, information security professionals, compliance and infrastructure managers to better understand shared responsibilities for protecting data. "It is the first time that CIOs and CISOs have a control board that they both can access to view what is going on in their enterprise," Allan Thompson, executive vice president of Dataguise, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

HP has unveiled a new suite of software which it says is designed to rationalize, measure and improve IT performance called the HP IT Performance Suite. The suite provides CIOs insight from across a comprehensive range of solutions to manage and optimize application development, infrastructure and operations management, security, information management, and financial planning and administration. Each product in the HP Software portfolio improves the performance of the discrete IT functions addressed, while a new IT Executive Scorecard helps technology executives optimize overall IT investments and outcomes.

Vormetric, Inc., a provider of enterprise systems encryption and key management software, has introduced Vormetric Data Security for SAP, a comprehensive solution that protects data in SAP environments with transparent, high-performance encryption. According to Gretchen Hellman, vice president of product management at Vormetric, SAP modules often contain sensitive data that is under the jurisdiction of the growing numbers of internal governance mandates and external regulations, and so require advanced protection from insider abuse and external breaches. The solution can encrypt, protect and control access to both structured as well as unstructured data - including SAP reports, archives and database extracts. "It is comprehensive protection for SAP data," says Hellman.

Oversight Systems' Oversight 6.2 solution has achieved certified integration with the SAP BusinessObjects Process Control application to further help organizations identify fraud and errors with continuous transaction monitoring. Through the integration, Oversight alerts SAP BusinessObjects Process Control of potential control violations identified by transaction monitoring based on event-driven defined rules, proactively providing the last line of defense.

With data breaches rocking large organizations with alarming regularity, Application Security, Inc. (AppSec), a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions for the enterprise, today announced new enhancements to its flagship enterprise platform, DbProtect. The latest version (v6.3) of the database security solution now includes the ability to block real-time attack and unauthorized activity. In addition, DbProtect will now include rights management support for IBM DB2 and Sybase ASE environments, joining the previously announced capabilities for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server. "AppSec already offers proactive measures that short-circuit attacks in their early stages, and now we're bolstering those capabilities with an active defense," says says Josh Shaul, CTO, AppSec.

Talend, a developer and distributor of open source middleware, has announced Talend Cloud, a cloud-enabled integration platform that provides a unified integration platform for on-premise systems, cloud-based systems and SaaS applications. Based on Talend's Unified Integration Platform, it also provides a common environment for users to manage the entire lifecycle of integration processes including a graphical development environment, a deployment mechanism and runtime environment for operations and a monitoring console for management - all built on top of a shared metadata repository.

With data breaches rocking large organizations with alarming regularity, Application Security, Inc. (AppSec), a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions for the enterprise, today announced new enhancements to its flagship enterprise platform, DbProtect. The latest version (v6.3) of the database security solution now includes the ability to block real-time attack and unauthorized activity. In addition, DbProtect will now include rights management support for IBM DB2 and Sybase ASE environments, joining the previously announced capabilities for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server. "AppSec already offers proactive measures that short-circuit attacks in their early stages, and now we're bolstering those capabilities with an active defense," says says Josh Shaul, CTO, AppSec.

Varonis Systems Inc., a provider of data governance software, has released a new version of its solution, targeted at Microsoft Exchange administrators seeking increased visibility and control over mailboxes and public folders. DatAdvantage for Exchange provides greater visibility into activities, such as who deleted a message or a folder; who changed permissions; who sent a message on behalf of someone else; who changed the content of an email and forwarded it as or on behalf of the original sender; who accessed an inbox, read emails and then marked them as unread. The challenge with the Microsoft Exchange native journaling and diagnostics tools is that they only capture a limited amount of data, according to Varonis. "With this latest update, our customers not only have a critical audit trail that they didn't have previously, but they also benefit from Varonis' automated analysis of that audit trail," David Gibson, director of strategic accounts and technical marketing for Varonis, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Dell says it will resell RainStor's specialized data retention database to support solutions such as application retirement and retention of machine-generated data. RainStor, a data storage infrastructure software company, designs and sells technology that enables data to be de-duplicated and compressed, while still accessible online through standard SQL language and BI tools. "The RainStor-Dell solution combines the object storage capabilities of the Dell DX with RainStor's online data retention (OLDR) repository," Ramon Chen, vice president of product management at RainStor, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

With data breaches rocking large organizations with alarming regularity, Application Security, Inc. (AppSec), a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions for the enterprise, today announced new enhancements to its flagship enterprise platform, DbProtect. The latest version (v6.3) of the database security solution now includes the ability to block real-time attack and unauthorized activity. In addition, DbProtect will now include rights management support for IBM DB2 and Sybase ASE environments, joining the previously announced capabilities for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server. "AppSec already offers proactive measures that short-circuit attacks in their early stages, and now we're bolstering those capabilities with an active defense," says says Josh Shaul, CTO, AppSec.

HP has unveiled a new suite of software which it says is designed to rationalize, measure and improve IT performance called the HP IT Performance Suite. The suite provides CIOs insight from across a comprehensive range of solutions to manage and optimize application development, infrastructure and operations management, security, information management, and financial planning and administration. Each product in the HP Software portfolio improves the performance of the discrete IT functions addressed, while a new IT Executive Scorecard helps technology executives optimize overall IT investments and outcomes.

HP has unveiled a new suite of software which it says is designed to rationalize, measure and improve IT performance called the HP IT Performance Suite. The suite provides CIOs insight from across a comprehensive range of solutions to manage and optimize application development, infrastructure and operations management, security, information management, and financial planning and administration. Each product in the HP Software portfolio improves the performance of the discrete IT functions addressed, while a new IT Executive Scorecard helps technology executives optimize overall IT investments and outcomes.