Technical Posts for 1H July

Some interesting articles that I passed over recently, which have interesting implications to Network and Systems Management:

• Seagate ships slim, fast Pulsar XT SSD
  Faster SSD's offer improvement opportunities for network management systems.
  Seagate is shipping its Pulsar XT.2 SSD with an SPC-1C benchmark rating, and has a second slower but higher capacity SSD coming soon. The 2.5-inch Pulsar XT.2 is available in up to 400GB capacities, has a 6Gbit/s SAS interface, and is built from fast single-level–cell flash.



• Energy scavenger eats leftover wireless signals
  Technology from GA-USA offers important possibilities for remore network probes.
  A group of researchers led by Manos Tentzeris at Georgia Tech are working on antennae that could scavenge stray wireless signals to power small sensors or microprocessors. If you’re close enough to a large radio transmitter, harvesting stray energy is pretty straightforward



• Cisco lays off 6,500 workers, execs; And sells off another 5,000 to Foxconn
  Network giant Cisco cutting staff indicates changes in the overall market.
  Networking giant Cisco Systems is going to get 11,500 employees smaller. After Wall Street closed today, Cisco said that it was going to cut 6,500 workers to get its costs more in line with its revenue streams, and added that it was selling off a set-top box manufacturing plant in Mexico with 5,000 employees to Chinese manufacturing Foxconn Technology Group.



• Ahead of Apple Q3 earnings, NPD expects near record Mac sales
  More Apple hardware means more diversity in the Network Management arena.
  According to numbers from the NPD Group, the answer is yes. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reported on NPD's numbers in a note to investors on Monday (as seen by AppleInsider), noting that Mac sales were up by 12 percent year-over-year for every month in the quarter.



• New fuel discovered that reversibly stores solar energy
  Solar energy is important for remote Network probes.
  Alexie Kolpak and Jeffrey Grossman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose a new type of solar thermal fuel that would be affordable, rechargeable, thermally stable, and more energy-dense than lithium-ion batteries. Their proposed design combines an organic photoactive molecule, azobenzene, with the ever-popular carbon nanotube.



• Oracle bestows SPARC T4 beta on 'select' customers
  The Gold-Standard platform in Network Management has received an upgrade.
  According to a blog post by Masood Heydari, vice president of hardware development at Oracle, the beta program will be available to a "select number of enterprises" – and as you might expect, the company is looking for enthusiastic shops that aim to use early access to Sparc T4 multi-core systems as a competitive advantage.

Enjoy the month!