Storage sees sales growth

Worldwide sales of external disc storage systems have experienced double digit growth of 17.1%, totalling $5 billion in the 2010 first quarter, reports Computerworld.

Research firm IDC says this is a strong indication that companies have loosened their IT purse strings and begun purchasing new equipment.

Total disc storage systems capacity shipped reached 3 397 petabytes, growing 55.2% year-over-year, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

HP is rolling out data centre solutions for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), intending to compete with Cisco/EMC/VMware and Oracle/Dell partnerships, states eWeek.

HP introduced three StorageWorks arrays including the entry-level X310 Data Vault for up to 10 clients, including Macs and PCs.

Chad Thompson, AMI Partners analyst, says: "This all points to business continuity. SMEs now know that if their systems go down, they're not only going to lose money, but they could be out of business very quickly.”

As Sprint's highly-anticipated 4G smartphone gets ready to go on sale, a glitch involving the phone's storage media has cropped up, says Wired.

The Android-based HTC Evo is the first 4G smartphone to hit the market. However, users have complained that the 8GB microSD card cannot save files.

HTC spokesperson Keith Nowak acknowledges: “We have identified the cause, are testing a solution and expect to have a software solution available very shortly that will be automatically pushed to phones over the air.”