Another exciting year has come and gone here at DSstar, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for joining us for our sixth volume. We hope you all have a great holiday season, and we look forward to spending another year with you. Look for the first issue of volume 7 on January 7th, 2003! -- The DSstar Team

-- IN THIS ISSUE --

THE RISK OF EMAIL

STORAGE PERFORMANCE COUNCIL ANNOUNCES SPC BENCHMARK-1

THE BIG BUSINESS OF STORING BIG DATA

Features

Storage Innovations

STORAGE PERFORMANCE COUNCIL ANNOUNCES SPC BENCHMARK-1
The Storage Performance Council (SPC) announces public availability of SPC Benchmark-1 (SPC-1), the first industry-standard benchmark for enterprise storage systems. This industry-standard benchmark, for the first time, gives customers a clearly applicable, vendor-neutral process to accurately compare and configure direct attach or network storage technology.

HITACHI ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF MCDATA'S 6140 AND 4500
McDATA Corporation has announced the worldwide availability of McDATA's entire core-to-edge family of storage networking solutions, including its Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch and Intrepid 6140 Director, through Hitachi Data Systems. As part of an existing reseller agreement, McDATA's newest products are now available with Hitachi Freedom Storage Series systems, allowing Hitachi Data Systems' customers to enjoy industry-leading flexibility, investment protection and ultra-high availability.

HITACHI LAUNCHES LESS COSTLY DATA STORAGE SYSTEM
Hitachi Data Systems, a unit of Hitachi Ltd, has announced a new data storage system aimed at budget-conscious customers seeking less costly technology.

JMR FIRST TO MARKET WITH HIGH AVAIL 1U FC RAID STORAGE SYS
JMR Electronics, a leading manufacturer of data storage solutions offering the industry's widest selection of Fibre Channel and SCSI storage systems, has announced its high availability 1U 2GB Fibre Channel RAID storage system, StorBlade FC RAID. The StorBlade product line is a breakthrough approach to rackmounted storage systems, and an ideal complement to server blades.

LeftHand LAUNCHES A COMPLETE, MAINSTREAM IP-SAN SOLUTION
LeftHand Networks, a provider of IP-based Network Unified Storage solutions, has announced the launch of its Distributed Storage Matrix(DSM) which enables customers to build complete IP-SANs using existing Ethernet infrastructure.

LEGATO DELIVERS FIRST LINUX BACKUP SOLUTION FOR IBM zSeries
LEGATO Systems Inc delivers LEGATO NetWorker for Linux on the Mainframe, the industry's first complete backup and recovery solution for business-critical Linux data on IBM eServer zSeries. As part of LEGATO's total information protection solution for data centers, NetWorker for Linux on the Mainframe, minimizes downtime costs, reduces management overhead and maximizes ROI of storage resources.

MOTIVE INTRODUCES ENTERPRISE SERVICE SOLUTION FOR STO NETS
Motive Communications Inc has announced the availability of its Enterprise Service Solution for Storage Networks. The solution enables storage vendors and service providers to offer remote service and support for storage area networks to improve service levels, uptime and customer satisfaction, while reducing support costs and total cost of ownership.

MTI'S VIVANT 400 JOINS FORCES WITH IBM'S FAStT700
MTI Technology Corp, a leading provider of enterprise storage solutions for more than two decades, announced recently that it now has interoperability and long-term customer support certified by the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Supported Solutions Forum (SSF).

NetScout AIMS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FIREPOWER AT SANs
NetScout Systems Inc has announced the extension of its nGenius Performance Management System to address Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs). Through newly-introduced Fibre Channel probes and NetScout's flagship performance management application, nGenius Performance Manager, enterprises will now be able to leverage an extensive feature set to manage the performance of their Fibre Channel traffic.

PLASMON SUCCESSFULLY DEMONSTRATES ULTRA DENSITY OPTICAL
Plasmon, a market leader for professional optical archival solutions, announced the successful demonstration of their new UDO drive and media technology at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas during the week of November 18th 2002.

RHAPSODY NETWORKS AND INCIPIENT ANNOUNCE COLLABORATION
Rhapsody Networks and Incipient Inc recently announced that they are working together to deliver breakthrough technology for improving data availability and manageability in storage networks on the industry's first intelligent fabric application switch.

SNIA'S SSF REGISTERS INTEROPERABLE MIDRANGE STORAGE SOLUTION
Midrange storage users can now more easily combine and support multi-vendor storage systems in their data networks, and protect their vital corporate data with offsite backup thanks to the latest interoperability solution registered by the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Supported Solutions Forum (SSF).

TACIT NETWORKS DELIVERS LAN-SPEED ACCESS TO DATA OVER WANS
With a recent announcement at Giga's Emerging Technology Showcase of a product line that delivers local area network (LAN) speed access to data over wide area networks (WANs), Tacit Networks Inc has established itself as a leader in enterprise-class WAN-based storage consolidation.

Financial Plays Of The Week

ADIC TO SUPPLY TAPE LIBRARIES TO SUN MICROSYSTEMS
Advanced Digital Information Corporation, a leading supplier of Intelligent Storage solutions, recently announced that the company will supply tape libraries to Sun Microsystems through a new OEM agreement.

ALACRITECH ANNOUNCES OEM PARTNERSHIP WITH CYBERNETICS
Alacritech Inc has announced an OEM and integration partnership with Cybernetics. Cybernetics has selected the Alacritech 1000x1 Single-port Gigabit Ethernet Server and Storage Accelerator to provide customers of its iSAN family of tape storage subsystems with outstanding performance in their IP-based storage area networks (SANs).

BMC RECOGNIZED AS A LEADER AMONG 'INTELLIGENT' ENTERPRISES
BMC Software Inc announced recently that CMP Media's Intelligent Enterprise magazine has selected BMC Software as one of its "48 Companies to Watch" as strong contributors to the development of intelligent enterprises. BMC Software was chosen a leader because of its ability to provide IT solutions that help organizations achieve competitive advantage by gathering, analyzing, sharing, and acting upon intelligence.

DataFlux ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF CUSTOMER ADVISORY BOARD
DataFlux Corporation, a SAS Company and leading provider of data management solutions announced recently that it has formed a Customer Advisory Board of experienced, objective information technology executives. By establishing the advisory board, the company is strengthening its relationship and communication with a representative group of customers across a broad spectrum of industries in which DataFlux solutions are currently being used.

DOT HILL MOVES COMMON STOCK TRADING TO AMER STOCK EXCHANGE
Dot Hill Systems Corp's common stock began trading on The American Stock Exchange (AMEX) at the opening of trading on Thursday, December 12, 2002. On August 17, 2001, Dot Hill announced that it had received notification from the NYSE that it failed to meet the NYSE continued listing standards. NYSE rules require that both average market capitalization and total stockholders' equity of listed companies must not fall below $50.0 million for more than 30 consecutive trading days.

SPINNAKER JOINS ORACLE PARTNERNETWORK TO PROVIDE NAS
Spinnaker Networks Inc announced recently that it has joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork to provide network attached storage for Oracle users. The Spinnaker SpinServer 3300 is a revolutionary network attached storage (NAS) solution that eliminates the complexities of storage management inherent in traditional NAS architectures, while offering unprecedented capacity and performance.

Enterprise Data Insights

THE RISK OF EMAIL
By Andrew Moffat
While email is often used for formal correspondence, the informal nature of email can bring significant corporate risk.

THE BIG BUSINESS OF STORING BIG DATA
By Lisa Gill
EMC's Interoperability Lab tests the company's products by putting them in real-life situations, as opposed to checking that the hardware works under ideal conditions.

HITACHI TEAMS WITH LEADERS ON MS SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, has announced its participation in the Microsoft System Architecture (MSA) for the Enterprise Data Center (EDC). The program pretested best-of-breed software, hardware, services and support for network connectivity in a data center infrastructure implementation based on the Windows 2000 Server platform.

QUANTUM ANNOUNCES NEW INTEGRATED DLTtape PRODUCT ROADMAP
Quantum Corp has announced its latest technology roadmap, which will provide customers with a broader selection of tape drives to meet their varying storage needs. The new product roadmap incorporates ValueDLT products from recently acquired Benchmark Storage Innovations Inc.