Data Storage Today

LiveTime Reduces Government IT Resource Costs

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:24:16 -0500

Newport Beach, CA, May 15, 2012 -- The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC), and the Department of Defense (DoD) have successfully deployed LiveTime's Service Manager to provide streamlined ITSM services that save time, and reduce costs of Government IT resources.

With a $14B budget and 142,000 employees, the DoC used disparate IT systems to manage all of its business processes, from Request Fulfillment through to Problem, Change and Release Management. The DoC wanted to standardize on a single centralized service management product and identified the need for a scalable cloud-based solution based on ITIL 3 best practices with seamless visibility between processes and integrated across all business units.

A very high level of security was also a minimal requirement for a majority of DoC implementations, so LiveTime's private cloud solution was selected for DoC's own data centers. The deployment provides DoC management with a single consolidated view of all processes and business effectiveness with unparalleled ease of use.

The DoD has also significantly reduced its overall IT budget after replacing more than six separate Remedy installations with LiveTime Service Manager in a matter of weeks. Vital to the deployment's success was the transmission of data from other proprietary Asset Management systems to a centralized CMDB of internal assets and services for managing military support operations around the globe.

The DoD leveraged LiveTime's extensive web services API to feed the integrated CMDB inside LiveTime Service Manager. The improved transparency allows the DoD to handle a significantly greater volume of requests, incidents and change than ever before, to provide a higher standard of IT Service Management.

LiveTime 7, which is expected to debut in Q2 2012, continues to drive open standards and increase user productivity by offering unrivaled ease of use for an ITIL 3 certified...

Redpark Cable Simplifies Arduino iDevice Connections

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:13:17 -0500

Emeryville, CA, May 14, 2012 -- Redpark Product Development today announced it is now shipping a TTL Serial Cable that connects iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to Arduino and to other devices with a TTL serial interface. The TTL Serial Cable is a one meter long cable and has a 6-pin connector. It is designed for use with iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad (3rd generation), iPad 2 and iPad.

The TTL Serial Cable is used in conjunction with a Redpark serial communications (RSC) library. Together these tools enable developers to write iOS apps that communicate with serial devices.

"There has been a great deal of interest in connecting iOS devices to Arduino", explained Redpark president Mike Ridenhour. "We're pleased to offer a cable that provides a simple and reliable solution."

The Redpark Serial Cable - part number C2-TTL - has an MSRP of $59. Further information about the cable and points of purchase is available at http://www.redpark.com/c2ttl.html.

ABOUT REDPARK

Redpark Product Development engineers accessories used in the consumer electronics industry. Areas of focus include iPod integration and app enabled accessories for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

EMC Buys Flash Array Startup XtremIO for Reported $430 Million

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:49:16 -0500

In a move to beef up its flash storage architecture, EMC on Wednesday unveiled its latest acquisition: XtremIO. Although financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Israeli business news site Globes pegs the price at $430 million in an all-cash deal.

EMC is betting Israel startup XtremIO's technology will give it an added dimension as it works to keep improving its flash storage portfolio. XtremIO's all-flash, scale-out, enterprise storage architecture is designed to leverage the speed and unique abilities of flash memory.

"XtremIO brings to EMC amazing technology with a fantastic team that's captured praise from early-view customers and many of the industry's foremost thinkers," said Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of EMC Information Infrastructure Products. "We fully expect XtremIO technology, once introduced to market, to have a tremendous impact on our customers' ability to leverage the unique advantages of all-flash storage across many of their most demanding applications."

EMC's Flash Thunders

EMC entered the flash storage market in 2008 and was the first to integrate flash drives into enterprise storage arrays. EMC shipped to customers over 24 PBs of flash drive capacity in 2011. EMC said XtremIO complements the range of its flash-based systems and software, which includes VMAX , VMAXe , VNX, VNXe and Isilon storage arrays.

EMC said adding XtremIO to its flash portfolio mix will extend its capabilities to develop and deliver networked storage infrastructures that are dynamically optimized for performance, intelligence, and protection for both physical and virtualized cloud environments.

Just weeks ago EMC also announced "Project Thunder," which optimized for high-frequency, low-latency read/write workloads. Project Thunder will build on the advanced PCIe technology delivered in VFCache to leverage the power of flash through a dedicated server networked flash-based appliance.

Flash Going Mainstream?

We caught up with Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, to get his take on EMC's...

U.S. Natural Gas Sector Hit by Coordinated Cyber Attacks

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:54:09 -0500

The U.S. government is moving quickly to respond to an ongoing series of cyber attacks on companies in the natural gas pipeline sector, according to the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT, at the Department of Homeland Security.

In a daily report released Tuesday, DHS reported that the coordinated cyber intrusions targeting natural gas companies began in December last year and have continued for the past five months. "Analysis of the malware and artifacts associated with these cyber attacks has positively identified this activity as related to a single campaign," ICS-CERT noted earlier this month.

These cyber attacks are being launched through the use of so-called spear-phishing attempts, which specifically target individuals within a company or organization. Phishing attacks generally involve e-mail spoofing or instant messaging activities that direct users to a fake online destination masquerading as a legitimate Web site, where the victims are asked to submit additional data.

With respect to the ongoing attacks on private natural gas companies, ICS-CERT noted that the number of persons targeted appears to be tightly focused. "In addition, the e-mails have been convincingly crafted to appear as though they were sent from a trusted member internal to the organization," ICS-CERT explained in a statement.

A Coordinated Response

ICS-CERT has asked all private companies operating natural gas facilities to submit the requisite data for identifying the scope of the infection as well as for developing a plan for mitigating the damage and eradicating the threat from the infected networks. According to the U.S. industry publication Natural Gas Intelligence, Obama administration officials and Senate staff met Monday to discuss the ongoing threat to the nation's energy production infrastructure.

"DHS is coordinating with the FBI and appropriate federal agencies, and ICS-CERT is working with affected organizations to prepare mitigation plans customized to their current network and security...

Cloud Has a Silver Lining for Interop Conference

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:41:26 -0500

The annual Interop Las Vegas conference has been under way this week, running May 6-10, but some question whether the show is losing steam. Interop's organizers bill the long-running IT expo and conference as the only event to offer an unbiased understanding of all the latest innovations, including cloud computing, virtualization, mobility and data center advances.

Indeed, more than 70 exhibitors are on hand at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, including Adobe Systems, Cisco, LG, Net Optics and Citrix, as well as a majority of lesser known companies hoping to make a name for themselves in the business technology market.

But is Interop living up to its promise this year? Is the event losing its influence? Or is it still as vital as ever thanks to the rapid evolution of new trends like cloud computing and BYOD (bring your own device)?

Still A Draw

We asked Laura DiDio, a principal analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Consulting, for her views on Interop. DiDio has been covering Interop since the early years and offered us some perspectives on the state of this year's convention.

"Interop is still a big draw, although the era when legions of reporters and half of a company's IT staff would take a week off to attend Interop -- or any of the other major trade shows -- is long over," DiDio said.

Still, she said, Interop does provide a terrific venue for networking, seeing the latest new product introductions and attending seminars. She said the fact that it's being held in Las Vegas means it will be a "larger-than-life spectacle and extravaganza," as Vegas conference attendees have come to expect over the years.

Heavy Cloud Focus

With regard to hot topics at this week's Interop show, DiDio pointed to cloud computing, virtualization, mobility and wireless, as well as some interesting gaming products and initiatives....

Patch Tuesday Breeds Confusion with Hodgepodge Bulletin

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:40:19 -0500

Microsoft on Tuesday issued seven security bulletins to address 23 vulnerabilities in its products. Redmond rated eight of those vulnerabilities critical, four are rated important -- and one of them is causing IT admins plenty of confusion.

"The remote code-execution vulnerability used against Microsoft Office, Windows and .NET Framework tie back to the TTF vulnerability used by Duqu," said Joseph Chen, engineering director of Security Technology and Response at Symantec. "We recently found a new Duqu sample showing that the threat is still active. Microsoft has provided some further patching, in addition to the already issued patch for the used vulnerability at the end of 2011."

Symantec also reports a much larger patch of vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Excel. Chen said the patches are rated important rather than critical because the user still gets a prompt to download or open the malicious content rather than it infecting automatically, but it could still be used as a targeted attack.

"The .NET vulnerabilities are also prominent in this month's patches," Chen said. "Exploits for this vulnerability are likely to be hosted as drive-by downloads on maliciously created or otherwise compromised Web sites. So, as always we strongly advise avoiding sites of unknown or questionable integrity, to protect from attacks seeking to use these security holes."

The Confusion Factor

We caught up with Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle, to get his thoughts on the latest round of patches. He told us May offers a mixed bag of bulletins and MS12-034 stands out for its confusion factor.

"This bulletin affects a hodgepodge of products including Windows, .NET, Silverlight and Office, and dissecting its contents has the potential to make IT security teams heads explode," Storms said. "The core of this bug fix is related to the vulnerabilities leveraged by Duqu -- a problem Microsoft fixed...

Tahzoo Employee Creates Razor Mediator Extension

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:36:33 -0500

Washington, D.C., May 08, 2012 -- Digital marketing services provider Tahzoo announces that Alexander Klock, a Technical Consultant at Tahzoo, has developed a template for SDL Tridion�, SDL's Web Content Management� Solution called the Razor Mediator Extension, designed to simplify the code-writing process. Tahzoo partners closely with SDL, the leader in Global Information Management solutions that enable global businesses to engage with their customers. The Razor Mediator is now available on SDLTridionWorld.com.

"We applaud this contribution from Alexander, which will have a significant impact on the ease of coding in the SDL Tridion developer community," said Jan Jaap Kolleman, CEO of SDL Web Content Management Solutions division. "Tahzoo and SDL share the common goal of helping businesses manage their brands, and enrich their customers' experiences. It's gratifying to see an individual on a partner's team go the extra mile toward this vision."

"The process of having an extension published on the SDL Tridion World site included stringent reviews to ensure the highest quality code," said J.G. Staal, COO of Tahzoo. "We're proud to have Alexander as part of our team."

The Razor Mediator provides developers with a new tool designed to cut development time and streamline work flow delivering the power of .NET within Razor Templates. Specific benefits of the Razor Mediator Extension include:
� Quick and easy access to most of your Template Package items and fields right at your fingertips. Because you are now able to do more and write less, the templating process can be done quicker than ever before.
� Open sourced and downloadable from Google.
� Addresses and eliminates many of the limitations and frustrations of DreamWeaver.
� Users are able to use Razor inside of SDL Tridion.
"As a member of the SDL Tridion World community, I was excited to make a...

Epicom Honored as SugarCRM Partner of the Month

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:18:25 -0500

AUSTIN, Texas, May 8, 2012 -- SugarCRM, the world's fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, announces Epicom as Partner of the Month for May and is the only partner to receive the award three times. Epicom was recognized for its successful SugarCRM implementation and integrations with its customer TengoInternet, the largest wireless Internet provider in the outdoor hospitality industry.

"Epicom did a really good job of helping us focus on how we wanted to use Sugar. They helped us define the process flows and cover all the details. And through the migration they made sure we didn't lose any of our customer histories. That was a big thing," said TengoInternet CEO & Co-Founder Eric Stumberg.

SugarCRM started its Partner of the Month program in November of 2010 to recognize the achievements of its partners throughout the U.S. and overseas. Sugar's Partner of the Month recognition is awarded on a monthly basis to a partner that has delivered significant measurable results to a customer. Of the more than 100 North American SugarCRM partners, Epicom continues to stand out for its ability to deliver excellent work, as seen with its customer, TengoInternet.

When Tengo decided to migrate to SugarCRM, the main objective was to come up with a centralized platform that would seamlessly integrate all of its customer activity and data for easy, long-term management.

After working with Epicom on requirements gathering, consulting, and training, Tengo was up and running in just over a month with all of its information in one place.

With an integration to Quickbooks, TengoInternet saves an average of 30 hours per week with automated posting to the accounting system. Additionally, its integration to Twilio, a cloud communications platform used for voice, conference and SMS applications,...

Visage and Concur Team for Expense Management

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:22:28 -0500

San Francisco, Calif. May 7, 2012 -- Visage, the leader in enterprise mobility management (EMM) today announced a partnership with Concur (NASDAQ: CNQR) to integrate Visage's MobilityCentral platform with Concur's expense management system using the Concur Connect platform. Today's announcement also marks the opening of the MobilityCentral platform for integration with other powerful SaaS applications.

The Visage/Concur integration will provide the first-ever combined visibility into individual-liable and corporate-liable mobile expenses. Companies will be able to accurately track individual-liable phone bills and corporate-liable phone bills all with ease in one place. According to Forrester, BYOD is now the norm in workplaces and 48% of employees choose their phone without even considering what their company supports. This innovation from Visage solves a significant management challenge that has emerged for businesses in the wake of the consumer-driven BYOD trend.

MobilityCentral provides deep analytics and reporting capabilities on an organization's management and consumption of mobility by uniting carrier bills, company users and hierarchy, wireless device inventory, and data from Mobile Device Management (MDM). With the open MobilityCentral platform, partners can create endless capabilities around mobility management.

According to Concur, MobilityCentral's powerful enterprise mobility management solution was a natural choice:

"While looking to add partners to the Travel and Expense Cloud that could help clients take control of their wireless spend, MobilityCentral's sophisticated data analysis, scalable architecture, and access to a broad corpus of mobility data made them an ideal Concur Connect Platform partner," said Barry Padgett, EVP, Concur Connect Platform Services.

"The Concur partnership completes one more step in our strategy to provide enterprises with the largest and most functional set of mobility data," said Jim Kiles, VP of Corporate & Business Development at Visage Mobile. "Providing clean and accurate analytics for enterprises facing BYOD challenges is the first of many innovative solutions that will emerge when customers and...

Discarded Digital Devices Can Retain Sensitive Data

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:24:49 -0500

Before recycling or selling an aging laptop or cellphone, you might want to smash it to bits instead. That's especially true for older Windows XP laptops and netbooks, or Android smartphones because they can be a gold mine to identity thieves, says McAfee identity theft expert Robert Siciliano. "I would beat the thing to death."

Apple's iPad and iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry don't represent the same risk, he says. But you should reset used Apple or RIM devices to the original factory settings before discarding.

Siciliano randomly purchased 30 used devices off Craigslist, and had them examined with simple forensics tools. Half the devices were thoroughly wiped clean, but 15 disgorged plenty of sensitive data, ranging from bank account and Social Security numbers to work documents and court records.

Consumers are storing more personal and work-related data on personal devices, at a time that electronics makers are enticing them to upgrade to faster, more capable smartphones, tablet PCs and e-readers.

Meanwhile, it's not always easy to wipe older devices clean, and any data left behind could have tangible value in a cyberunderground that revolves around online exchanges in which stolen data get quickly converted to cash, says Mary Ann Miller, financial fraud expert at Nice Actimize, a supplier of banking security systems. "Security should be a key consideration from the moment you acquire a device -- and when you dispose (of) it," she says.

Millions of Windows XP laptops, desktops and netbooks are expected to be scrapped or sold as Microsoft rolls out its Windows 8 operating system later this year. An XP hard drive can be difficult to extract data from and tricky to wipe completely clean, Siciliano says.

Resetting Google Android smartphones to the original factory settings doesn't always work, Siciliano says. "On iPhones and iPads, we found little to no data;...