This Week in Products: Symantec’s Backup Exec 10d

Security

Microsoft released Office 2003 Service Pack 2.

SP2 includes an enhancement to Outlook to help prevent “Phishing,” improve the handling of “Junk” e-mail by rendering them as plain text, support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 – Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 have been updated to include support for the upcoming releases of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.

Microsoft this week also released its Data Protection Manager backup and recovery product

Storage

Apricorn announced today 120GB capacity enhancements to the EZ Bus and EZ Storage product lines.

The EZ Bus Hi-Speed USB 2.0 portable hard drive is now available in capacities 20GB through 120GB. The hot swappable, plug-n-play device contains a 4200 RPM hard drive and comes complete with USB cable, auxiliary power cable, travel pouch, and a software bundle including EZ Gig II Backup and Disaster Recovery software, Cryptainer Encryption software and Second Copy Synchronizing software.

The EZ Storage 2.5 inch notebook hard drive, meanwhile, is now available in 20GB through 120GB capacities. Based on the PATA standard, this drive has a processing speed of 4200RPM and weighs 3.5 ounces. The 120GB capacity is 9.5mm, has a 8MB cache buffer, and is built to comply with RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) standards.

EMC announced EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange, a software offering for mid-sized enterprises (MSEs) and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) that run Microsoft Exchange Server storage administration tasks and e-mail on its Clariion AX and CX series’ networked storage systems.

EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange, a plug-in to the Microsoft Exchange System Manager interface, is designed to allow customers to manage e-mail, migrate data and manage SAN storage from within the same software tool. The software is ideal for organizations that manage up to 3,000 Exchange mailboxes and have or will implement networked storage, and for those upgrading to Exchange Server 2003, EMC said.

IBM announced the availability of four gigabit per second (4Gbps) Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions for blade servers. The product features the QLogic Fibre Channel host bus adapter, the QLogic 4Gb switch module and McData 4Gb switch module.

The IBM BladeCenter delivers configuration zoning and extended distance wizards to simplify switch installation and fabric scaling, while providing non-disruptive code load and activation using McData HotCat functionality. The product also supports optional McData security software to protect data and manage data access.

BenQ relased a line of DVD rewriters, the DW1640, embedded with SolidBurn Technology which applies a self-learning algorithm that allows unknown DVD +/- media to be written with superior quality, the company said.

The DW1640 executes a series of tests that determine the optimal writing strategy for DVD media of “unknown” quality, while also allowing enhanced over-speed burning quality. Users can utilize the latest BenQ QSuite 2.0 tool to activate or deactivate the drive’s over-speed burning function at their discretion. The DW1640 also sports Write Right Technology, which maintains perfect control over the laser beam angle and the power rate being projected onto the disc. The DW1640 offers an increased storage capacity of 8.5GB per disc or up to four hours for DVD quality video, playable on most DVD players and computer CD/DVD drives.

Data Management

Sun Microsystems Inc. announced the availability of StarOffice 8 software.

StarOffice 8 runs on Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems. The suite is comprised of five key components: StarOffice Writer, Impress, Calc, Base and Draw.

Sun said StarOffice 8 software is the first commercial office suite to use the OpenDocument format, standardized at OASIS through an open transparent process. The OpenDocument format provides improved interoperability and enhanced programmability, Sun added.

DataMirror launched Transformation Server/ES (Event Server), a product for initiating the real-time flow of information throughout the enterprise.

Transformation Server/ES detects events as they occur in mission-critical production applications and creates business information to feed into the message queues of leading enterprise application integration (EAI), business process management (BPM), and service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments, the company said.

Transformation Server/ES leverages DataMirror’s low impact Change Data Capture (CDC) technology to connect natively to source databases running on any platform including Oracle, DB2, UDB and SQL Server. By reading changes directly from the database logs the database, application, and end users of mission-critical applications are not impacted, according to DataMirror.

Infrastructure

Dell said the dual-socket Dell PowerEdge 1850, 2800, 2850 and 1855 blade servers, along with the Dell Precision 470 and 670 workstations, will now incorporate dual-core, Intel Xeon processors. Dual-core technology combines two processing units into a single processor chip.

Dell PowerEdge servers running I/O-dependent messaging and database applications can see performance improvements of up to 53 percent when combining multi-core technology with PCI Express and DDR-2 memory, the company said.

The PowerEdge 1850, 1855, 2800, and 2850 servers are available for pre-order today with factory-installed Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (32/64-bit edition) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (32/64-bit edition). The Dell Precision 470 and 670 are available for pre-order today with factory-installed Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32/64-bit edition) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (32/64-bit edition).

IBM unveiled line of new entry which included the new IBM xSeries 100 server, along with the xSeries 206m and xSeries 306m systems.

The xSeries 206m and xSeries 306m are built on the second generationof IBM’s Xtended Design Architecture (XDA), and include Hot Swap hard drives for enhanced ease of use and increased uptime, redundant server power supply options to help maximize data availability, standard integrated IBM ServeRAID 8e delivers non-OS based hard drive data redundancy and an integrated open standards based (IPMI) management controller for remote server control from anywhere on the network.

All three servers will be available with Microsoft Small Business Server, Microsoft Server 2003, Red Hat or Novell SUSE Linux operating systems.

AMD announced three new models in the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor series for one-way to eight-way x86 servers and workstations.

The Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor Model 880 for up to eight-way, 16-core enterprise-class servers and Model 280 for high performance dual processor workstations and servers are immediately available. Model 180 for one-processor, two-core servers and workstations is expected to be available within 30 days, the company said.

Wireless

Eurocom Corp. launched a Mobile Workstation featuring AMD Dual Core and FX 64-bit, Intel Pentium 4 Prescott up to 3.6 GHz (FSB800).

The workstation includes dual-channel memory DDR 400 MHz and DDR2 533 MHz up to 2GB high-end upgradeable graphics with 256MB of DDR2 video with ATI and Nvidia chipsets certified for OpenGL. The notebook hard drive includes up to 160GB or 320GB of storage with multiple drives, while the display is a 17-inch widescreen LCD with the highest resolution of WSXGA+ (1680×1050) or WUXGA (1920×1200) and Super Clear Glossy Surface. The product also includes a 1 Gigabit LAN and wireless 802.11a/b/g or 802.11b/g LAN and Bluetooth multiple optical drives including 4x DVD+-RW (DVD Burner) and multi DVD Burner.

HP expanded its mobile offerings, including iPaq Pocket PCs and a mobile printer.

The introductions include the HP iPaq rx1950 series Pocket PC, an HP iPaq hx2000 series Pocket PC, the HP Deskjet 460 mobile printer and upgrades to Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 for select HP iPaq models.

The upgraded HP iPaq hx2000 series includes the HP iPAQ hx2790 with a biometric fingerprint sensor, the HP iPaq hx2490 and the HP iPAQ hx2190. The HP Deskjet 460 mobile printer replaces the HP Deskjet 450 mobile printer series, is equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity(1,2) and produces color documents and photos.
Pricing is as follows:<br<- HP iPAQ rx1950: $379
– HP iPAQ hx2190: $449
– HP iPAQ hx2490: $549
– HP iPAQ hx2790: $649
– HP Deskjet 460 mobile printer: starting at $299

Nortel announced wireless mesh product enhancements to its Campus Mobile Worker solution.

These include Nortel’s Wireless Access Point (AP) 7215 for expanding wireless broadband networks to indoor environments, and the new Wireless Bridge 7230, designed to eliminate the challenges of establishing wireless network connections into the customer or service provider’s wired network.

Networking

ProCurve Networking by HP announced the continued expansion of its Adaptive EDGE Architecture including an InterConnect Fabric (ICF) switch, an upgrade to its Identity Driven Manager software, ProCurve Mobility Manager software and a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) switch designed to simplify the deployment of WLAN Access Points.
Canadian Pricing for the new products is as follows:
– ProCurve Switch 8108fl – $34,999
– ProCurve Switch 8116fl – $48,749
(Each of the 8100fl products include 1 power supply, 1 fabric module and 1 management module. Optional redundancy is available for each of the included items.)
– ProCurve Identity Driven Manager v2.0 (IDM) – $6,879
– ProCurve Mobility Manager v1.0 (PMM) – $2,499
– ProCurve Switch 2608-PWR – $1,039

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