Lucas Mearian

At 2 a.m. on Aug. 27, two days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Tim Babco grabbed a red binder containing the latest version of SCP Pool Corp.

While many regional health data exchanges struggle to snare start-up funds, Indiana Health Information Exchange Inc. is already building a set of IT services based on a mature electronic medical record system used by five health care operators here.

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced this month that it is shipping the next generation of its storage resource management software, Storage Essentials 5.0, which is now integrated with its server management software, Systems Insight Manager.

EMC Corp. announced a new line of bundled networked storage packages targeting the midsize enterprise and small-to-medium-size business (SMB) marketplace that include lower pricing, a greater emphasis on channel sales and a Web portal tool that expedites the process of configuring and ordering products.

Keeping data secure, tracking who uses it and managing it in a way that maintains backup windows and keeps information available to customers -- especially after an interruption in service or a disaster -- are among the top issues for IT executives, according to users who took part in a panel discussion yesterday at Storage Networking World.

A panel of users at this week's Storage Networking World in Orlando said they are either having difficulty funding disaster recovery projects or are rethinking how they protect data to better ensure 100 per cent reliability in restoring systems in case of a disaster.

IBM Monday unveiled its first virtual tape library for open systems and plans to release the next version of its TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller virtualization engine, which pools storage resources from heterogeneous arrays behind an appliance.

Fewer than 30 percent of financial services companies will outsource strategic projects by the end of next year, although companies seem more willing to outsource IT maintenance or call-centre type work, according to a study released recently by Gartner Inc.