Mimosa Systems made its name in Exchange archiving. Now the California-based company is
setting its sights on SharePoint
, a tool that's creating its own growing third-party market.
Mimosa NearPoint for Office SharePoint Server doesn't just archive SharePoint documents, Mimosa executives argue, but does so in a way that saves on storage and energy costs. That's because an optical archive uses less power than a hard drive that whirrs more than a hippy at a Phish concert. Users of NearPoint for Exchange can use the same management console, so in a sense the SharePoint is just an add-on to what you've already got.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/23/20090 comments
Doug asked readers this week if they'd ever buy a server from Cisco, now that the company has
moved into the server market
. Here are some of your answers:
Nope -- I'm very satisfied with Dell, particularly its support. Cisco support doesn't come close. Given past experiences with Cisco training and router systems, well, Dell is better.
-Anonymous
IMHO, this is an avenue Cisco to sell its own servers for voice systems rather than HP, which it uses now. I can see Cisco offering a package of x number of blade servers, all encased in a nice, neat, single cage for a complete solution -- at least for SMBs such as ourselves. Hopefully, Cisco will also get to the point of offering virtualized solutions for its voice systems, thus eliminating the herd of physical servers that are now required. Knowing Cisco's pricing, however, I have to wonder how competitive it will be in the server market.
-Scott
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/20090 comments
I defend the press often. When readers complain of spelling errors, I point out just how many words the average editor processes per day. When they complain of liberal bias, I point 'em to Lou Dobbs or Fox News. When they complain about right-wing talk pundits, I mention Keith Olbermann.
But I can't defend journalists who waste words when there's simply no story. Here's what has me on this tirade: Steve Ballmer recently spoke at a BusinessWeek media event. Somehow, this was construed as the first step in Microsoft buying The New York Times. To some reporters, that little bit of nothing was a big story. Even bigger? Ballmer's adamant denial when surrounded by paparazzi-style journalists after the event.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/20090 comments
When I first reported that
IBM was eyeing Sun
in a $6 billion-plus deal, I thought it was a terrible idea. There are too many competing architectures, too much overlap, and Sun would lose its role as one of the last of the big innovators.
Apparently, at least a few people agree, including analyst Dana Gardner (who, like me, used to write for InfoWorld). Gardner sees IBM's only motivation as market share. In my opinion, you're better off building rather than buying market share, which is why I was so against Microsoft buying Yahoo.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/20090 comments
While I never downloaded the beta or the final beta (what Microsoft calls a "release candidate"), I've spent countless hours on IE 8 -- mostly talking about it. I think at least 75 Redmond Report readers wrote in about their IE 8 experiences, and their input will drive
Redmond
magazine's May cover story.
The browser has a decent feature set, but the test versions -- even the last RC -- were clearly problematic. That's why I was surprised when Microsoft shipped the browser late Wednesday night.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/20/20090 comments
After a Forrester study revealed that virtualization is
popping up all over the place
(as Jordan says, "duh"), a couple of readers shared how they're contributing to its spread:
I have decided that I need to work for Forrester or Gartner. I've never seen another industry that brings in billions in revenue to state the obvious six months to a year after everbody else already knew it. Of course, people are using virtualization. Of course, it's widespread. Of course, it saves lots of money. Duh?
On a serious note, we are about to utilize a Hyper-V failover cluster to run several of our core services such as DHCP, some DCs and DNS servers, WINS and WSUS. With the way that Datacenter 2008 offers unlimited virtualiztion licensing for the OS, it is a no-brainer. Especially with tight budgets.
-Jordan
We have zero interest in the energy aspect of virtualization. We are, however, going to embrace the new virtualization models to help minimize downtime in case we have failure of our various server computers. We are very attracted to the resilience these new virtual environments can offer.
We recently purchased two low-end Dell PowerEdge T300 servers to retire some eight-year-old servers. Once we are done with the upgrade, we will have four main servers online, each running some version of Windows Server. On our two new servers, we are going to run the free VMware ESXi hypervisor. Initially, each machine will have just one live virtual machine, an instance of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. We plan to create additional virtual machines for each of our four main servers and keep shutdown available -- that way, if any of our servers physically fail, we can fairly quickly roll over to a cold VMware image, do a quick restore of the most recent backup data for that server, and we are good to go. We don't require 100 percent uptime, but we are interested in minimizing the downtime in the case of a major server failure.
With the current economy, these two servers will likely have to last me quite awhile. I like the versatility a virtual environment gives me to be able to create a new server if I really need to, or even just take a snapshot to test a routine software upgrade. As I get more comfortable with the performance of scaling up the number of virtual machines running on a single box, we may consolidate our servers some, but for now that is not the goal. I would imagine that many folks are in the same boat as myself -- using these new virtual environments to reduce downtime and just enhance our options in a small IT environment.
-Dennis
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/18/20090 comments
I remember going to Microsoft when it only had two buildings -- one for apps and another for MS-DOS -- with a cafeteria in between. Now the Microsoft campus makes Harvard look puny. All these workers drove up house prices and drove up traffic.
The Obama administration feels the Microsoft employees' pain and plans to help fund an overpass to make it easier to get from one side of campus to the other. Hey, Obama! My driveway needs paving. Can you help a fella out?
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/18/20090 comments
The Wall Street Journal
reports that
IBM is negotiating to buy Sun Microsystems
for more than $6 billion (one-thirtieth of what we've given to AIG).
This could be a large and possibly problematic deal. Already, IBM has a range of platforms, PC servers, System x mainframes, PowerPC servers, and the System i and System x. Even Houdini couldn't untangle this knot of products. Sun has a similar issue. It has standard PC servers, as well as RISC machines -- and Solaris runs on both. The two also have an array of virtualization, management and storage tools.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/18/20090 comments
Cisco this week officially
entered the server market
with a line of blade systems that's 100 percent built for virtualization. In a Dell-like move, Cisco is
supporting third-party hypervisors
, particularly ESX and Hyper-V. It's also pushing network virtualization and storage management -- so in essence, the whole kit and caboodle is virtual from the get-go.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/18/20090 comments
I remember some months ago reading about a research team (not Microsoft) that found IE 8 to be the
safest browser ever built
. This is a bit like saying the Mercury Bobcat was the safest car -- before it was ever built, and before its gas tanks started exploding.
I didn't run IE 8 through any lab tests, but you've all told me about IE 8 and how the beta and release candidate spend more time crashing than driving. How can it be the fastest when it isn't even moving? When it does work, many of you find it faster than IE 7. But can we at least wait 'til final release before
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/16/20090 comments
Microsoft tries as much as possible to lock down new product features early in the beta, and then drives to make sure they all work. The Windows 7 crew must have missed that memo as the team
just added
a troupe of tweaks, tunings and trimmings all tailored toward tightening the tool before it takes on release candidate status.
Many of the tweaks are fixes to little problems, like USB items not working after the machine comes out of suspend mode. Others affect look and feel, such as moving the "new folder" button up higher so it's easier to build new places for files.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/16/20090 comments
In response to Doug's question about green IT, one reader says it's more a matter of money than environment:
I'll go green only if the green equates to dollars. I have lived enough years to remember discussing the coming ice age and the first Earth Day that was an awareness for global cooling. The climate is going to do what it wants and we can't influence it. Can we get Peter, Paul and Mary to sing "Where have all the sunspots gone"?
Now, if I can save some bucks by using an alternative and RELIABLE power source, I am all for it. My clients would go for saving some green, too.
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/16/20090 comments