Lucas Mearian

Clustering provides massive throughput because of an increased port count that comes from cobbling many storage servers together into a single pool of disks and processors, all working on a similar task and all able to share the same data. Management functions are distributed across the storage server farm. To an application server, the farm looks like a single, block-level storage system. Storage capacity can be added without disrupting applications running on the cluster.

In the aftermath of the Asian tsunami late last year and a rash of earthquakes off California's coast in June, businesses and governments are racing to roll out more-sophisticated electronic messaging systems to alert and guide people who face possible disaster.

Babco, senior director of IT at Covington-based SCP, a US$1.3 billion wholesale distributor of swimming pool supplies, had relocated his operations on two earlier occasions when hurricanes threatened neighbouring New Orleans. Both of those storms turned out to be near misses, but Babco said this week that the practice runs helped him fine-tune his plan for when the real thing finally hit.

IBM Friday released a new data-protection product that keeps a copy of files as changes are made, allowing users to dial back to recover any version of a document they want on local disks and on network servers. IBM said its new software, called Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files, provides real-time data backup for laptops, PCs and file servers.

The progress of a U.S. Senate bill that would require companies to disclose any compromise of sensitive data was slowed this week to allow for more input from senators. Several IT managers interviewed this week criticized the proposed bill because it calls on companies to disclose the loss of data regardless of whether it's encrypted -- and because it calls for fines of up to US$11 million for failing to report losses. The managers contend that encrypted data is unlikely to be translated if stolen or lost.

EMC Corp. at its annual users conference Monday formally announced its storage virtualization technology, which will reside on products from the three leading switch vendors and will be generally available next quarter. The technology will be able to present arrays on a heterogeneous storage-area network (SAN) to application servers as if from a single pool of capacity.

Bank of America Corp.

Financial services firms will be adopting business process management (BPM) tools and techniques at rates outpacing those of other industries this year, because the efficiencies and cost savings they can create are vital in an industry quickly losing profit margins as products become commodities.