Stories by: Brian Fonseca

The need to control and secure a continuing explosion of data across the corporate world is forcing IT managers to constantly be on the lookout for new equipment that can handle perpetually evolving requirements.

Intel has launched its System-on-Chip (SoC) EP8579 integrated processor, which is said to offer lower power and customization capabilities for embedded voice, storage and security applications. The new product family is the first wave of Intel's revamped SoC design, which the company said adds smarter chip intelligence.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is set Wednesday to unveil a new 3.5-in. hard disk drive family for desktop PCs. The company said the new line includes better data protection capabilities and 43% better idle power consumption than the Deskstar 7K1000 line.

Corporate information stored on file servers and network attached storage (NAS) devices is in danger of compromise because IT governance policies and access rules in many companies are incapable of dealing with a massive growth of unstructured data, according to a Ponemon Institute report issued Tuesday.

Sun Microsystems' legal counsel disclosed in the blogosphere Thursday that efforts to settle a patent infringement lawsuit filed against the firm by NetApp have so far been unsuccessful.

Imation Wednesday unveiled the Atom Flash Drive, a 1.5-in. long portable storage device that is no larger than a paperclip and can store up to 8GB of digital files.

Hewlett-Packard this week unveiled de-duplication software designed to speed up and simplify data backup operations in its high-end and midrange of disk-based backup systems.

Businesses last year spent approximately US$1.3 billion to make sure that spinning hard disk drives did not overheat and kept running despite being squeezed to near-capacity limits, according to IDC.

Convolve last week filed a federal lawsuit this week charging that Dell, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have violated its patents for vibration control techniques in hard drives and PCs.

Seagate Technology may be pursuing a buyout of Intel's 49 percent stake in its joint NAND flash memory venture with Micron Technology, according to an analyst report issued Thursday.

Hewlett-Packard and startup Fusion-io Wednesday announced plans to jointly enable the latter's solid-state memory technology to run across HP server products.