Capital Media News & Updates
News.CNET.com – January 27, 2010
Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company
Oracle announced Wednesday it completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in a deal valued at more than $7 billion, a move that transforms the database and business-software giant into a hardware company as well.
Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle has acquired several large companies in its drive to out-consolidate rivals in the business computing technology market, sometimes launching hostile takeovers and sometimes prevailing over regulatory objections. This time, the difficulty was persuading European antitrust regulators who were concerned about the fate under Oracle of the open-source MySQL database software business that was part of Sun.
But that barrier fell as the European Commission approved Oracle's Sun acquisition plan on January 21. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison and other executives from Sun and Oracle are set to detail plans for Sun on Wednesday during a Webcast event starting at 9 a.m. PST.
"My hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison," Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said in a bittersweet memo Tuesday, bidding adieu to the company he helped found 28 years earlier. "To be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company."
By giving it a place in the server, storage, and processor domains, the Sun acquisition means Oracle is a direct competitor to more companies, a complication given that it sells its database and other software for use on servers sold by those competitors. IBM already was Oracle's biggest foe, but others that have survived the consolidation wave include Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and EMC.
Since announcing the Sun acquisition plan in April, Oracle's sales pitch has been one of integrated products--hardware and software built to work together so customers don't have to do the integration work themselves or pay a third party to do it.
On the Oracle-Sun Web site, the company describes its new breadth this way:
With the addition of servers, storage, Sparc processors, the Solaris operating system, Java, and the MySQL database to Oracle's portfolio of database, middleware, and business applications, we plan to engineer and deliver open and integrated systems--from applications to disk--where all the pieces fit and work together out of the box. Each layer of the stack will be architected to improve performance, leverage innovation and centralize management so that IT will be more predictable, more supportable, and more secure. Customers will benefit as their system performance, reliability and security goes up and their system integration and management costs go down.
Back to TopStorageNewsletter.com – January 26, 2010
LTO-5 Specifications for Licensing
By LTO Program
The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program technology provider companies, HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corp., announced details for the licensing by storage mechanism and media manufacturers of the LTO Ultrium format generation 5 specifications.
The specifications support tape cartridge storage capacity of 3TB assuming a 2:1 compression, a near doubling of capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 280MB per second assuming a 2:1 compression. The LTO Ultrium format generation 5 will also include new partitioning functionality, enabling capabilities that can enhance file control and space management, addressing the growing needs of marketplace segments such as Rich Media. More information on this technology will be forthcoming later this year.
“LTO products have been a core part of storage solutions for over a decade and embraced by organizations to address their backup, archive, compliance and data security needs, so there is great anticipation in the marketplace for the release of the new generation 5 standard,” said Rob Clark, VP Business Operations at Quantum. “The generation 5 specifications are designed to reflect the current and future needs of data managers worldwide while adding new features, such as partitioning, to enable additional control and efficiencies via space management.”
LTO Generation 5 also continues to enable LTO tape drive hardware-based writing of encrypted data to the LTO Ultrium tape cartridge, helping protect the storage and transport of sensitive information, along with offering WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many) functionality.
The LTO Ultrium format generation 5 drives are designed with backwards-compatible read-and-write capability with the Ultrium format generation 4 cartridges, and backward read capabilities with generation 3 cartridges, helping to protect investments and ease implementation.
A strategic blend of disk and tape technologies can help organizations address retention requirements while reducing total cost of ownership. Compared to other storage technologies, tape can have lower acquisition and operational cost and use less power. It’s also a core component of successful data storage practices that utilize multiple technology solutions to avoid potential data errors. Storing a copy of data off-line on tape can help avoid intentional or unintentional on-line corruption.
In response to extensive end user research, along with licensee and industry analyst input, the LTO Program has incrementally increased the data rate specification for generation 5, and plan to provide roadmap updates to LTO Ultrium generation 6 and beyond to give users improved tape performance attributes.
How to License LTO Ultrium Technology
The LTO Program has historically offered several different license packages – from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture LTO Ultrium products, to basic packages providing LTO format specifications.
Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges.
Back to TopColorado Springs, CO – December 29, 2009
Capital Media Partners with Alliance Storage Technologies – Exclusive Manufacturer of Plasmon Storage Technologies
Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc. (ASTI), owner and exclusive manufacturer of Plasmon brand technologies, today announced a partnership with Capital Media Group to become a primary wholesale distributor for Plasmon UDO-based media. This enables Capital to deliver state-of-the-art professional archival storage media at the most competitive prices.
As an Alliance partner, Capital will have access to the complete line of UDO media to ensure its customers receive the latest in secure, permanent, archival technology. Additionally, Capital’s customers will know that it has a direct pipeline to a highly experienced service organization with the tools and resources to make products readily available.
“This partnership is mutually beneficial for both Alliance Storage Technologies and Capital Media Group. We are committed to offering our customers best-in class products in the data storage media market. Being an exclusive distributor for Alliance Storage Technologies and their complete line of Plasmon brand products will allow us to continually address and satisfy our customer’s needs. We are thrilled to be an exclusive distributor in the North American market and look forward to a successful partnership with Alliance Storage Technologies,” says Tony Somers, President of Capital Media Group.
“Alliance is specifically looking to build its partner channel with the most trustworthy distributers and VARs,” says ASTI CEO Chris Carr, “Capital is pure wholesale with direct relationships to the industry’s leading manufacturers. They bring a dependable distribution network for our North American market.”
Ultra Density Optical (UDO) is the first storage technology specifically designed for professional and legal data archive requirements. UDO provides absolute data authenticity for regulatory compliance or for any application where archived information must remain intact and permanently unchanged. The media are available in Rewritable and two different WORM (Write Once Read Many) formats. All three formats are offered in 30GB UDO1 and 60GB UDO2 capacities.
About Capital Media
Capital Media Group is a national wholesale distributor of tape, optical, and imaging supplies. Our goal is to provide our customers with the most competitive pricing in the industry while offering superior customer service. Whether you are looking to purchase for your own inventory or to drop ship directly to your end users, Capital Media Group maintains and stocks a large warehouse of all the major brands of OEM data and imaging consumables.
About Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc.
In January 2009, ASTI completed the acquisition of all Plasmon assets, including the complete line of Plasmon libraries, drives, media, parts, and related inventory. With this acquisition, ASTI positions itself as the leader in archival data storage and continues to maintain and develop Plasmon brand solutions based on the latest in UDO optical storage technology. For further information, please visit www.alliancestoragetechnologies.com, call 719-593-7900 or email info@astiusa.com.
StorageNewsletter.com – December 23, 2009
CD Recordable Media Market Decreased 13% From 2Q09 to 3Q09
According to the Santa Clara Consulting Group
CD recordable media technology revenue decreased from 2Q09, changing by -13% in 3Q09, to $173 million, according to the report CD Tracker from the Santa Clara Consulting Group.
CD writer revenue was very limited with DVD writers serving the same functionality at a comparable cost.
Global CD recordable disc sales were flat on a quarter-to-quarter basis. CD-R discs representing 1035.688 million units of this volume and 98% of the market. Average price was relatively flat during the quarter at $0.14. CD- RW media sales continued to be limited, representing 2% of total unit sales.
Regionally, The Americas continued to lead the market, with 51% of media units, followed by Europe with 28%, other Asia/Pacific markets with 13%, and Japan with 8%.
Disc manufacturers have been phasing out production of CD-R media in response to the decline of the format. Some production lines have been shifted to countries where production costs less, like Thailand and Vietnam, but the change in total optical-disc volume has not been significant. Overall, excess capacity exists in the market. Some of the equipment has been shifted to DVD media manufacturing, while other production lines are not in operation at all.
Back to Top