Microsoft Buys Avere Systems to Bolster Performance Storage Offerings

Microsoft is quick out of the blocks this year on the acquisition front with an announcement that it will acquire Avere Systems for an undisclosed amount. Avere Systems is a hybrid cloud data storage company based out of Pittsburgh. Its main offering is a blend of on-site and cloud-based storage that places hardware on the …

Security: Cloud Meltdown, or Is It?

Do Meltdown and Spectre invalidate the cloud? Do modern security issues invalidate the cloud? Does lack of provable security invalidate the cloud? But isn’t it provable? These are pretty strong statements, but the latest Spectre patch microcode recall for certain CPUs is starting to make some companies rethink their use of the cloud. What type …

When IT Comes Apart: A Case of Failure

What do you do when everything fails—not just typical application failure, but failure of more than one subsystem all at once? Recently, I had such a failure. The air-conditioning plant failed, and the new 10G switch failed, causing a loop that brought down the entire storage network. Then, the storage redundancy failed due to a …

Recent Announcements: This Is New December 2017

Past and current partners have made a number of end-of-year announcements that have crossed our news desk. Some convey significant changes, others incremental changes. Some even herald complete turnarounds in direction. Starting with this article, we plan to bring you a monthly synopsis of the announcements our news desk receives. Without further ado, here is …

Recap of re:Invent

Recap of re:Invent: One of the last, if not the last technology conference for the year 2017 just recently came to a close.  The Amazon AWS re:Invent Technology Conference was held from November 27th – December 1st in Las Vegas, Nevada and I wanted to share some of my key points that I have gathered about the conference.

Overly, Underlay, Packets Flow Free. Is SDN Going to Take Over the World?

A software-defined network: is it an evolution or a revolution in networking? The hype of SDN has been around for several years, but as yet it doesn’t seem to have managed to get much traction outside of the MSPs and Fortune 500 companies with regard to SDN, and telcos with regard to SD-WAN. When, if …