Stories by: Tom Jowitt

Dell rounded out a busy year so far with the launch of new servers and storage equipment tailored towards the needs of the small to medium sized businesses.

New research has found that companies are expecting their in-house data centre capacity to decrease going forward, despite most organisations moving their client server-based applications into the cloud.

With virtualisation being increasingly rolled out across many data centres and server rooms, Quantum has this week begun shipping a module that will allow for the backup and restoration of VMware ESX virtual servers on its DXi-Series of disk backup systems.

A US company has upgraded its cross-platform videoconferencing service and at the same time launched a new plan designed to broaden its appeal to the small to medium business (SMB) segment.

Google has taken a radical new approach when it comes to cooling data centres. The search giant has opened a unique data centre in Belgium that has no backup chillers installed, but instead relies totally upon free air cooling to keep its servers cool.

Yahoo is touting a data centre design which it says is based on 'chicken coops'. But data centre operator e-shelter, while welcoming the concept, has queried whether the design would be suitable for the corporate sector.

Most organisations are getting a poor return on their investments in firewalls due to the complex issues in managing them. This is despite the fact that enterprises are facing on average 300 network attacks every year.

The recession is driving green IT into data centres, and organisations that are facing continued pressure on their budgets and data centre resource, are now actively investigating software and outsourcing alternatives.

One company is offering to resolve the perennial problem of how companies can securely dispose of old hard drives containing valuable commercial data, after it setup a mobile disk shredding service that will come to a customer's site and destroy old hard disks.

The spate of hot weather in the UK claimed a notable scalp after a London data centre experienced a cooling failure, which caused several servers to overheat and crash.