HP races NetApp

Vendor competition is heating up as HP has thrown down the gauntlet before Network Appliance (NetApp) about how it intends to grab customers and market traction, says Internet News.

"We think we have the right ingredients, such as industry-standard components and clustered software, making storage easy to manage and highly available for the high-end NAS customer," says Michael Callahan, chief technologist of HP's StorageWorks NAS division.

"We're making deeper investments in our core technologies, and we plan to aggressively compete against NetApp," he adds. "We're going to give them a run for their money."

EMC has unveiled storage systems that integrate flash memory-based solid state drives (SSDs) into its hardware, rather than disk drives, says VNUNet.

SSDs can store a terabyte of data using 38% less energy than traditional mechanical disks, the firm said.

In a transaction-per-second comparison, EMC pointed out that the reduction in power usage would be around 98%.

3Par, a global provider of utility storage, was once again one of the top vendors singled out by Fortune 1000 companies as having the most exciting storage products or services, according to CNNMoney.

Rounding out the top four were industry giants EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, and NetApp.

The study also indicates that 3Par received the highest possible customer ratings for product quality, product performance, product reliability, and technology innovation.