Servers and business storage

Cisco kicks off fiscal year with strong earnings

Cisco shares rose by 6.8 percent on Tuesday after the bell as the networking giant published a rather solid earnings report for the first fiscal quarter of 2013.

The San Jose, Calif., based corporation reported a net income of $2.1 billion, or 39 cents a share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 48 cents a share on a revenue of $11.9 billion -- up by 6 percent on an annual basis.Wall Street was expecting Cisco to report first quarter earnings of 46 cents per share on revenue of $11.78 billion.Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers asserted … Read more

Dropbox passes 100-million-user mark

Cloud storage company Dropbox has reached 100 million users, and to celebrate it's giving away gigabytes.

The company, now five years old, announced the milestone today in a blog entry written by founder Drew Houston.

"Once upon a time, Dropbox had its humble beginnings in a Boston train station when I forgot my USB stick at home," he wrote. "We're still unsure if it was fate or fluke, but one thing's stayed the same all these years: each of us has a unique reason for using Dropbox."

Houston told The New York Times … Read more

Intel's 60-core chip ships; elites like Hawking get it first

Intel's first 60-core chip is here, but only elite institutions like Cambridge University will get early access.

The chip, generally called Phi, isn't your typical Intel processor. It's less like a central processing unit (CPU) -- which is the chipmaker's bread and butter -- and more akin to a graphics processing unit (GPU) that works in conjunction with the CPU.

In fact, Intel tried to bring out a consumer GPU card called "Larrabee" based on the technology but canceled the project in 2009.

But the company still needs the technology to compete with Nvidia … Read more

Amazon cloud outage impacts Reddit, Airbnb, Flipboard

Amazon's cloud service is experiencing an outage in the East Coast region, taking down popular sites like Reddit and Airbnb.

The outage has lasted for several hours, limiting access to popular Web sites and causing problems for small businesses and other Amazon cloud users. Along with Reddit and Airbnb, Heroku, FastCompany, Flipboard and others have been impacted.

Amazon isn't saying what happened, but a spokesperson said the problem isn't due to an attack, as some have speculated. A member of hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the outage via a tweet, but the Amazon spokesperson said that'… Read more

Iomega ships 2 new business StorCenter NAS servers

Iomega today announced the availability of the StorCenter px2-300d and the StorCenter ix4-300d NAS servers for business environments, ranging from small offices to enterprises.

The former is a dual-bay NAS that offers up to 6TB of storage space and the latter is a four-bay with a top capacity of 12TB. Both servers are available in a diskless configuration, leaving users the option of picking the type of hard drive and the capacity on their own. Both also offer Iomega's Personal Cloud feature, which was first introduced with the Home Media Network Drive more than a year ago.

Iomega says … Read more

Google tries wowing the world with a look at its data centers

Google only rarely gives outsiders a look at its data centers, but today it's trying to make up for lost time with a large online photo gallery and Street View tour of the computing hardware.

The company launched a new site, "Where the Internet Lives" with a lot of eye candy for people who enjoy racks of computer gear, raised-floor ventilation systems, multicolored cables, and massive air-conditioning chillers. Urs Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president for technical infrastructure, announced the site in a blog post today.

It's short on details for those who want to eye Google's servers up close, … Read more

Chip startup Calxeda raises $55 million for ARM-based servers

Calxeda, the startup that's building data centers with chips normally found in cell phones, has raised an additional $55 million, signaling that its low-power server technology may be gaining traction.

The company, which was founded four years ago by former Intel and Marvell engineer Barry Evans, is an early proponent of using ARM architecture in servers rather than traditional x86 designs popularized by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

"This significant infusion of capital will accelerate the exciting trajectory we've been on for the past four years," Evans said in a statement. "Businesses require a more … Read more

Huawei will have tough time cracking U.S. data center market

By product line, Huawei looks like any other data center equipment provider. Storage, networking, and security software rolls out at a steady clip and market wins -- mostly in China and emerging markets -- follow.

Except for the U.S., where Huawei is a vendor that rankles national security experts and politicians regularly. When it comes to networking and telecom gear, Huawei is a relatively small player in the U.S. In fact, most IT buyers will recite the top vendors easily -- Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, and Hewlett-Packard. Huawei might as well not exist.

In emerging markets Huawei is … Read more

iPhone 5 so far: One road warrior's two-week test

Two weeks in, I've got a better feel for the iPhone 5, both good and bad.

After upgrading from the iPhone 4S to the 5 two weeks ago yesterday, I've been on the road -- bouncing between the east and west coasts. That's plenty of opportunity to test the iPhone 5's mettle.

The good, the bad, the meh:

Wi-Fi: This was the first gotcha. After arriving at my destination in Philadelphia, a Wi-Fi network I needed to access didn't take -- despite working fine with a host of other devices, including an iPhone 3GS and … Read more