Breaking News - Fujitsu Increases 24x7 Hard Disk Drive Capacity
Fujitsu Computer Products of America, a supplier of computer products including hard disk drives and peripherals, today announced the release of its 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) series lineup, intended to offer support for 24-hour non-stop operation with capacities up to 250GB. According to Fujitsu, organizations are increasingly requiring 24x7 operations from their hard disk drives. The new Fujitsu 2.5-inch MHZ2-BK 7200 RPM and the 2.5-inch MHZ2-BS 5400 RPM SATA series features enhanced performance for extended duty disk drive usage for business-critical and industrial applications that require higher storage capacity.
Fujitsu has been delivering 2.5 drives with 24x7 operation capability over the past five years, and with the addition of the MHZ2-BK and MHZ2-BS series, seeks to meet the demand for high-performance drives with greater storage capacity. "With the latest generation, we are now moving the capacities up to 250GB,” Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing and business development for Fujitsu Computer Products of America, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We have a 5400 RPM family and a 7200 RPM family so we have a little lower power offering in the 54 and a little higher performance stepping up to 72."
Fujitsu is targeting the industrial sector with these new drives. "Looking at the positioning of the product," he observed, "there is a lot of industrial manufacturing and robotic equipment applications where they have a little more strenuous environment than your typical laptop. They are looking for the enhanced reliability and performance that we offer with these products." The high performance MHZ2-BK 7200 RPM model is maximized for blade servers, nearline storage devices, telecommunication devices, and other data-intensive business critical applications that require 24-hour operation. The MHZ2-BS 5400 RPM series is designed to support industrial applications with 24x7 access including surveillance cameras, industrial PCs, POS systems, ATMs and robotics.
Both the MHZ2-BK and MHZ2-BS series have low power consumption, according to Fujitsu. Additionally, Fujitsu offers RV (rotational vibration) compensation technology for 2.5-inch SATA HDDs, which minimizes the adverse effects of vibration to maximize performance of applications under demanding operating conditions.
The new drives
offer greater energy efficiency, and are part of the Fujitsu Green
Policy Innovation initiative. The Fujitsu MHZ2-BS HDD series is
currently available and the MHZ2-BK series will be available in
July 2008. For more information, go here.
Back
to top
Breaking News - MEGA International Introduces Risk and Compliance Automation Tools
MEGA International has announced the release of new software that automates audit, control, and risk initiatives in organizations. MEGA GRC Suite, Version 3.0 recognizes the overlap in audit, risk, and control activities and offers a global repository that centralizes and coordinates all data relating to these areas, the vendor said. This provides single searchable environment that can be shared between departments, divisions, work groups, or committees. The MEGA GRC Suite now includes three solutions to meet the needs of various users, while enabling integration into a common platform.
One of the three solutions is MEGA GRC Audit, designed to improve the productivity and information sharing capacities of the audit team by enabling a view of annual audit planning, automation of follow-up recommendations, and centralized management of audit working papers. The second solution, MEGA GRC Compliance and Control, helps managers comply with regulations and be assured that the company is maintaining effective controls and managing action plans for performance improvement. Finally, MEGA GRC Risk is intended to decrease the threat and cost of managing operational risks by coordinating the identification, evaluation, and control of risks, while integrating the different approaches of each organization. It provides an auditable record.
End-users have universal access to resources previously stored in silos, making it easier to avoid duplication of effort, eliminate inconsistent or outdated versions of data, and streamline overview reporting for senior management, the vendor said.
The suite of products has extended the reach of MEGA, which has long had roots in banking and finance, into the GRC arena, Daniel Hebda, vice president of technology in the North American market for MEGA International, told 5 Minute Briefing. MEGA GRC Suite is based on technology MEGA acquired roughly two years ago, and this latest version is a major step forward in ease of use and in adding key functionality, said Hebda. The new release includes a "massive interface overhaul," he explained, introducing "the latest, the newest, the better Web technologies,” including Web 2.0.
"Our goal and our intent was always to make sure that we made it much easier to use than it was when we purchased it,” Hebda elaborated. “We feel we have reached that now. It is very easy to use, very attractive interface, very streamlined and simplified.” One of the key features of all MEGA software, added Hebda, is that it is provided in a way that the customers themselves can make changes to the tool - "the data they capture, the functionality it provides." The new release will be available beginning in June. For more information, go here.
Back
to top
SOA Software Acquires LogicLibrary
SOA Governance automation vendor SOA Software has acquired LogicLibrary, a SOA repository and governance vendor. The combined company will offer an end-to-end governance package for enterprises moving deeply into SOA with large volumes of services.
SOA Software focuses on SOA policy and operational governance with registry, policy management, and service management capabilities. LogicLibrary focuses on SOA Development Governance with an enterprise repository providing support and governance for development assets/services and integration and federation with IDEs and application development point solutions.
The combination of the two companies’ product lines - already underway - creates an integrated SOA governance automation solution that spans all lifecycle stages and governance types, Roberto Medrano, executive vice president of sales and marketing, SOA Software, told 5 Minute Briefing. "LogicLibrary Logidex is focused on development governance. Combined with our ability to provide strong governance workflows, we provide an end-to-end enterprise SOA lifecycle, starting with the identification phase, growing through analysis design develop and test, and to stage release, operate, version control, and change management," he said.
This wide breadth will enable enterprises to accelerate SOA adoption with the rapid delivery of relevant consumable services for both distributed and mainframe environments. Governance is often a stumbling block for even the best SOA efforts, Medrano said, adding that the acquisition helps to extend its presence in the SOA governance automation market. Currently, many organizations employ manual means – such as spreadsheets or “lightweight business process management tools” - to track and catalog services.
"Logidex provides development governance capability, SOA Software’s Workbench and Service Manager provides the operational governance capabilities,” he explained. SOA Software’s Workbench tooling “provides a policy governance capability end to end. This is a change or an expansion of the capabilities of Workbench. It's end-to-end because the capability of the enterprise governance needs to reach earlier than the development governance phase. We're envisioning the notion of service planning governance, or service portfolio planning as a specialized set of capabilities within the enterprise.”
The addition of LogicLibrary's technology extends SOA Software's integration capabilities across governed development platforms (such as IBM, Microsoft and Open Source), as well as governed service platforms (such as IBM, JBoss, Microsoft, and SAP). SOA Software and LogicLibrary have already been working on a common solution for some time now, Medrano said. “We already integrated the engineering teams, as well as parts of sales. We've already worked for several months on a common meta model and a common state machine for all the products. This is very beneficial for our clients, because from a single meta model they can do all the governance models that we described.” For more information, click here.
Back
to top
Tidal Software Announces Automation Tools for Messaging Environments
Tidal Software, a provider of application scheduling and performance management software, announced a tool for automating administrative processes around Microsoft Exchange Server environments. Tidal Intelligent Automation for Microsoft Exchange Server is part of Tidal's effort "to provide greater levels of automation for IT operations," Rod Butters, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Tidal, told 5 Minute Briefing.
"Intelligent Automation for Exchange helps automate the administrative processes that IT needs to use around an Exchange Server – not only to manage Exchange Server itself in terms of its performance as well as the administrative actions on it, but also the environment that surrounds it," said Butters. “Many times the environment surrounding Exchange - such as the servers and databases - is as important as Exchange Server itself," he noted. It simplifies processes "and for companies that are just moving to Exchange Server 2007, that really helps because they probably don't have any practices in place today for administering that platform."
By automating Exchange Server management processes, the product helps ensure that administrative processes are executed consistently, administrative access is managed securely, and that corporate policies are adhered to, according to Tidal. Offering the ability to deliver self-service options, Butters said, an HR department, for example, can be enabled to add or remove employees without involving an IT administrator and without turning over administrative privileges to HR. The software also maintains an audit log around all those activities.
Additionally, he stated, in terms of performance, Intelligent Automation for Microsoft Exchange Server "can help diagnose problems, help manage configuration changes that might be required, and other activities that would be needed in managing an Exchange Server environment." Automated processes can help in diagnosing and identifying the sources of technical problems impacting Exchange Server performance. Such tools also help localize problems within supporting software, hardware, or third-party products.
Intelligent Automation for Microsoft Exchange Server supports SCOM (Systems Center Operations Manager) 2007, providing a means to automate the response to problems identified by the SCOM 2007 Management Pack for Exchange Management Server, according to the vendor. For details on the product, go here.
Back
to top |
