Cloud providers debate hardware spend

Amazon Web Services boss Andy Jassy believes that cloud computing will ultimately help the hardware market - not hurt it, reports The Register.

However, VMware CEO Paul Maritz believes otherwise. "Techniques like virtualisation and cloud are all about driving hardware to higher levels of efficiency. In that sense, we're going to be able to get more done with less infrastructure. But the efficiencies you can get might still drive higher demand."

Maritz adds that new architectures being incubated in the public cloud are going to be disruptive to the way things have been done in the traditional enterprise.

At the Supercomputing 2010 conference, IBM unveiled details of a storage architecture design, created by IBM scientists, that will convert terabytes of information into actionable insights twice as fast as previously possible, states PR Newswire.

IBM won the Storage Challenge competition for presenting the most innovative and effective design in high performance computing with the best measurements of performance, scalability and storage subsystem utilisation.

Prasenjit Sarkar, master inventor, storage analytics and resiliency, IBM Research, says: “This new way of storage partitioning is another step forward on this path as it gives businesses faster time-to-insight without concern for traditional storage limitations."

Seagate's i365 subsidiary has rolled out products and services for channel resellers who struggle to sell cloud-related services, says eWeek.

The online storage company unveiled its EVault Cloud-Connected Service Provider programme.

The package is housed in an appliance combining EVault and corresponding best practices to help participating resellers build a profitable, localised cloud-based data protection service backed up by i365 and the EVault Cloud.