Computer Industry News July 2009 Article Seagate BlackArmor, Western Digital SSD, Sun Infiniband, Sun J4400

Computer Industry News July 2009

The Digital Storage and Networking sectors of the Computer Industry are making headlines. The major players are continuing to invest in innovation and pump out new products while making strategic moves to better adapt in a new global economy. In 2009, technology demands originate from businesses and personal use. Companies such as Seagate, Western Digital, and Sun continue to provide solutions to the real world.

More about Seagate

Seagate heads into July 2009 with re-organization underway. Seagate's plan includes more than cutting overhead. Seagate continues to promote and release new product lines. Digital storage solutions have been tailored to address specific needs of businesses.

Seagate, like many other manufacturers of consumer goods, is experiencing challenges related to the economy. In order to shore up and re-position the company, Seagate is currently in the process of laying off workers. Restructuring is the other tactic. In this case, restructuring means that there will be at least one promotion. On June 15th, 2009, Seagate announced the appointment of Mark Whitby As Vice President, Sales And Marketing (Europe, Middle East and Africa). The promotion was from within the organization. Mark Whitby previously held the position of executive director sales and marketing for the same regions. Does this mean that Seagate is focusing on market share outside of the US? Or is it a case of the right place at the right time?

New product lines geared to business users have been part of the focus at Seagate. Storage product requirements have gone beyond a user's primary workstation hard drive. From image files to important work documents, companies are starting to understand that drive failure can translate into lost revenue.

The Solution? According to Seagate, BlackArmor Family of External Storage Solutions would be the solution. Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) announced three additional BlackArmor ® product offerings: the BlackArmor ® NAS 220 storage server, the BlackArmor ® WS 110 external drive workstation and the BlackArmor ® PS 110 portable drive. These uniquely styled products were designed with the business professional and small home office in mind.

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Featured products on Seagate.com 6/22/2009:

Constellation Hard Drives

Seagate ST9500431SS

Seagate ST9160511NS

Seagate ST9500530NS

BlackArmor Family

Seagate ST320005SHA10G-RK

Seagate ST340005SHA10G-RK

Seagate ST360005SHA10G-RK

Seagate ST380005SHA10G-RK

2009 has been a year of transformation for Western Digital (WD). WD has been investing in innovation while simultaneously shedding assets that may not fit into the company's forward vision. Staying the course, Western Digital is working with the resources in hand.

Back on March 30th, 2009 Western Digital completed a significant acquisition. WD announced that it has completed a $65 million cash acquisition of SiliconSystems, Inc., Aliso Viejo, California. SiliconSystems, Inc. was recognized as being a leading supplier of solid-state drives (SSD) for the embedded systems market. Currently SSD technology is the preferred technology for industrial applications, data streaming applications, embedded computing, data center, military, and medical markets. This also marked the entrance of Western Digital into the Solid Sate Drive (SSD) market. The move was strategic and bold. Then on May 20th, 2009, Western Digital announced that they were going to sell an asset (media substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak, Malaysia) in order to realign cost structures. After months of expanding and contracting, Western Digital goes into July with plans to start earning revenue related to their new SSD product line.

On June 16th, 2009 announced that the SiliconDrive® III SSD product family started shipping to the world. This new product family is based on technology from its March 2009 acquisition of SiliconSystems. WD has unleashed three SSD flavors: (1) PATA interface 2.5-inch drive (2) SATA interface 2.5-inch drive (3) SATA interface 1.8-inch drive. The drive capacities range from 30gb to 120gb. These new products are working their way through the computer hardware channels from Manufacturer to Distributors, OEMS, Integrators, Resellers, Retailers, and ultimately to end users.

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Featured products on WesternDigital.com 6/27/2009:

SSD SATA 2.5 inch

Western Digital SSD-D0120S

Western Digital SSD-D0090S

Western Digital SSD-D0060S

Western Digital SSD-D0030S

SSD Micro SATA 1.8 inch

Western Digital SSD-F0030S

Western Digital SSD-F0060S

SSD PATA 2.5 inch

Western Digital SSD-D0030P

Western Digital SSD-D0060P

Western Digital SSD-D0090P

Western Digital SSD-D0120P

More about SATA Drives

Sun MicroSystems has been courting and transforming in 2009. At the same time, the scales of the server market have been tipped. Sun is using high-end hardware offerings to address the changes.

Sun Microsystems has been busy preparing for its official wedding with Oracle, in recent months. This landmark deal seems to have helped move enterprise level projects and products to gain priority on the Sun Microsystems To-Do-List. There has surely been restraint at Sun and Oracle celebrations, due to another historical change in the server market. At the end of April 2009, Cisco announced that they were entering the server market. Cisco has enjoyed years as a networking giant. The announcement has already brought Cisco to be at odds with long time partner HP. The move by Cisco is also keeping Sun on their toes.

In a recent article, Trade Federation predicted "Oracle's business-centric mindset plus Sun's recent financial challenges could cause the company to concentrate on successful profit centers in the time to come." On 6/23/2009 Sun announced a new high-end networking solution: The InfiniBand Switch 648. The demand for Networking products has been growing for years and with an MSRP over 70k, networking makes sense. Oracle, an enterprise database software company, has much to gain with a product that fits their customers' non-software needs and enables quick data transfer across networks.

Networking is so common in 2009, that many home users even have networking products. Routers, switches, and network adapters have become a requirement for every size business. The new Sun InfiniBand Switch 648 takes networking to its limits. This unit has 648 ports and comes in an 11u Enclosure/chassis, accommodates up to 9 Line Cards and 9 Fabric Cards, Chassis includes 3 Fabric Cards, 2 Management Modules, and 4 Power Supplies.

Sun has also been featuring high-end storage to compliment their high-end networking products. 2 Hard Drive Arrays poised to support data intensive environments are the J4200 Array and the J4400 Array. The Sun Storage J4200 Array can hold up to 48 SAS/SATA II drives. This array supports SAS drives that range from 73gb to 450gb and run at 15k rpm. On the SATA side, the array supports drives that range from 250gb to 1TB and run at 7,200rpm. If that is not enough, companies can step up to the Sun Storage J4400 Array that can hold up to 192 SAS/SATA II drives. In addition to significantly larger quantity of drives that the array can hold, the J4400 requires a minimum of a 500gb SATA-II drives. The J4400 also supports 400gb 10k rpm SAS drives in addition to the SAS drives supported by the J4200.