TechVirtuoso

HTC Supersonic coming sooner then expected?

0 Comments March 3, 2010 : By Frank Owen · Category : Mobile, News

SPRINT BRAND LOGO Sprints soon to be flagship Android device may be coming to big yellow sooner then anyone expected.  According to a article at Forbes.com the HTC Monster could be available by Summer of 2010.  Is it coincidence that this date has been pushed up a week after Verizon announced that they are looking better then expected for the LTE rollout of 2010?  Is Sprint trying to 1 up Verizon by getting their first WiMAX enabled phone out the door before Verizon gets their first LTE roll out functional?

No matter the reason I cannot wait to get my hands on this device.  The rumored Snapdragon processor, slim form factor and large display should make this phone a winner among many Sprint fans.  Look below for some leaked photos of the new device, these photos have been taken from EngadgetMobile.com, androidmobileos.com and youhtc.ru.

View HTC Supersonic

HP Blades Tech Day 2010: Day 1

0 Comments February 28, 2010 : By Frank Owen · Category : HP Blades Tech Day, News

After arriving in Houston for the HP Blades Tech Day 2010 I met in the lobby with the rest of the Bloggers, IVY Worldwide Staff and Calvin from HP.  We had a couple of drinks at the hotel and then headed over to Fusion Pizza, right down the road.

The pizza and drinks were very good and during dinner I had some great discussions with @kevin_houston, @Knieriemen, @rbrambley, @kiwi_Si, @StorageNerve and @sfoskett.  We talked about everything on how to create a good podcast (Contact Greg Knieriemen if you need to know how to create one, he loves it) to the origins of ProCurve (which we still do not have a full answer).

bloggerdinner Dinner at Pizza Fusion – Picture taken by Stephen Foskett

After dinner we headed back to the hotel where John Obeto surprised us with some Nigerian Palm Wine.  I was a little hesitant after the smell but after a couple of drinks I decided it wasn’t to bad.  After a couple of glasses I decided It was probably best to call it a night before I wasn’t able to get up in the morning.

Nigerian-Palm-Juice The Palm Wine – Picture taken by Rich Brambley

Stay tuned for more posts on the HP Blades Tech Day!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

What the heck are we doing here?

0 Comments November 19, 2009 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Featured, News

So first off, on behalf of all of us, I want to apologize for not being around much in the last couple of months. Things of have been busy for all of us. We’ve also been trying to sort out what we’re going to do with this project.

Most of you know, when the five principles of this site left Neowin back in July, we did so with the intent of starting a new site. But without getting into all the details… life got in the way. We really want to make the project successful, but we now see that we’ve been going about it in the wrong way.

The core idea behind founding TechVirtuoso was a sound one. Business IT people talking about business IT. Or as we say on the website “Enterprise technology for and by those who live it” … the elements we’ve laid out in the original charter for this site were good, but placed us in an area that is a bit too strict for what we could be doing.

Let’s face it, none of us are reporters. We’re IT people. Us trying to “report” on events in such a neutral and unbiased way as we’ve planned out, is not only difficult for us, but isn’t that interesting to you, the reader.

So this is what TechVirtuoso will be from this point forward. A place to talk about the projects we’re working on, ideas we have, concepts we’ve developed. When we find something we find interesting, we’ll talk about it, not feeling like we have to go out and “report” about news. When we started out on this project originally I was wrong in thinking that we needed to be structured in a way that produced unopinionated content… hearing the opinion of other IT people is exactly what we’re going to be about from this point forward.

Obviously, we need to talk about news, but why not do so in a way that allows us to show others about ourselves, and the things that interest us… instead of just being drones? When I think about what I’d want to see in a business IT site, it’s not just press releases and the latest buzzwords. I want to see how it’s going to help me do my job better. How it’s going to make my users happy — or really anger them. It would be much more interesting to others, to see how real IT people in other areas are actually using that technology.

From this point forward, we seek to turn this site into an “business IT lifestyle blog” … which also means talking about other non-enterprise things that we’re interested in.  None of us can go home from work and turn the IT world around us off. So we’re going to talk about all the IT around us, from the perspective of an IT professional. We live in a world where business IT features quickly make their way down to the consumer world, and vice versa.

So in addition to content, we’re going to be making a few other changes around here. The layout is going to get a facelift. We’ve also turned off our forums, because we’re not in the business of building those right now.

We hope that you enjoy the new TechVirtuoso. I know we’re going to enjoy creating it.

Thanks,
Michael Stanclift
Shane Pitman
Frank Owen
Don Smith
Eric Iles

HP and Converged Infrastructure

0 Comments November 4, 2009 : By Frank Owen · Category : News

HP_logoHP is announcing  today HP Converged Infastructure, a group of new and revitalized HP products that will revolutionize the way IT looks at their datacenter solutions.  This virtualized collection of network, storage and shared servers can be virtualy allocated to meet the growing needs of the business faster and easier than ever before.

The HP Converged Infastructure consists of four major platforms.  HP Infrastructure Operating Environment, HP FlexFabric, HP Virtual Resource Pools and HP Datacenter Smart Grid.

TechVirtuoso was able to speak to Lee Johns on a conference call earlier today about the Storage Works products that would fall under the HP Virtual Resource Pools category.  The three products that the call focused on were the HP StorageWorks X9000 Network Storage System FamilyHP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform v3.0 andHP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration.

The HP StorageWorks X9000 family leverages technology from the aquisition of IBRIX and can scale up to 16 PetaBytes.  HP is planning on an inital release of three revisions from the X9000 family available for shipment November 16th for as low as $1.50 a GB.  The X9000 family includes the X9300 Network Storage Gateway; a 2 unit rack mount solution that brings scale out services to HP or 3rd Party arrays or sans, the X9320 Network Storage System; a highly available scale-out storage solution and the X9720 Network Storage System which will serve and store hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of file based data.  The X9720 will ship on January 4th.

The HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform v3.0 (or just SVSP v3) allows IT to simplify management of HP and 3rd party SAN devices.  V3 brings some major improvements to the platform including simplifing the creation of LUNS.  SVSP V3 is currently available starting at $31,032 for an entry 1 terabyte configuration which includes the hardware and the SVSP VM license.

The HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration is a new product which will give a high availability solution to Hyper-V users currently utilizing multiple EVA units.  It will allow for auto-failover of  application services as well as read and write enabling of remotely mirrored mir-range storage over your MAN.  The HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration will be available on November 25th for a U.S. list price of $5280.

Note:  Some links may not work until HP officially announces these products.  They are scheduled to release the announcement at 9:00AM 11/4/2009.

HP Superdome Tech Day: Superdome in an adaptive infrastructure demo

0 Comments October 8, 2009 : By Shane Pitman · Category : IT Technology, News

Earlier this week we joined several other sites at HP’s Cupertino, California campus for HP’s Superdome Tech Day. One of the scheduled events focused on some of the configuration and management of an HP Superdome solution in an adaptive infrastructure. HP solutions architect Richard Warham took us through several scenarios including how to rapidly scale up an application server in the event of a sudden surge in transaction volumes, and how to maintain service availability in the event of a server failure.

HP Superdome Tech Day – 10 years in mission critical enterprise

0 Comments October 5, 2009 : By Shane Pitman · Category : IT Technology, News

HP_SuperdomeHP Superdome, the name “Superdome” alone invokes a sense of something enormous, powerful, and coming from HP, one can only envision a system at the top end of the power and capability scale. In fact, that’s just what the HP Superdome systems aim to be. For the last decade, HP has developed the Superdome platform to provide mission critical solutions for datacenter environments where down time can not only be costly but disastrous. HP Superdome provides the uptime demanded by services like emergency call centers, major financial centers, and online ordering systems, as well as mission critical infrastructures for major corporations around the world.

Over the last decade, HP has developed the Superdome platform to provide mainframe performance and stability. According to a 2008 Dataquest Insight survey, the cost of downtime within large organizations (2,500+ users) has jumped from $40,000 in 2005 as the average cost per hour of downtime of mission critical business systems to $128,000 in 2008, an increase of 120%. These same companies reported that the amount of downtime they had experienced during the 2005-2008 time frame had also increased 69%. With statistics like that, it becomes painfully obvious that IT downtime downtime directly affects the bottom line. Throughout the growth of the HP Superdome platform, features like redundant cell board components, double chip spare memory, and hot swap I/O have been developed to provide resiliency and to prevent downtime, all with the goal of providing near perfect availability.

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Wi-Fi Alliance launches updated 802.11n certification program

0 Comments October 1, 2009 : By Don Smith · Category : IT Technology, News

Following the ratification of the 802.11n standard, the Wi-Fi Alliance has kicked off the Wi-Fi Certified n program, an updated version of the Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n draft 2.0 program. The ‘new’ program keeps all the draft 2.0 requirements and adds testing for optional features like:

- Simultaneous transmission of up to three spatial streams
- Packet aggregation (A-MPDU), to make data transfers more efficient
- Space-time Block Coding (STBC), a multiple-antenna encoding technique to improve reliability in some environments
- Channel coexistence measures for “good neighbor” behavior when using 40 MHz operation in the 2.4 GHz band

“Wi-Fi Certified n builds on the success of our draft-n certification program and marks a point of maturity in 802.11n technology,” said Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa. “Our expanded testing and branding program helps ensure the best user experience in the context of the Wi-Fi industry’s continued innovation and the evolving landscape of products implementing next-generation Wi-Fi.”

More info about the Wi-Fi Certified programs can be found here.

HP StorageWorks Tech Day 2009, Day 1 includes HP Total Care expansion announcements

0 Comments September 29, 2009 : By Shane Pitman · Category : IT Technology, News

HP_logoDuring their StorageWorks Tech Day 2009 event being held in Colorado, HP announced the details of several new additions that expand the HP Total Care solution line. HP Total Care provides a host of resources offered by HP Authorized Partners, and includes services, tips and tools such as financing, drivers & downloads, free online classes, support, and recycling, all focused on promoting growth and management resources to SMB’s.

“By investing in new IT solutions now, SMBs will be in a stronger position to seize growth opportunities and thrive as the economy rebounds,” said Kathy Chou, vice president, Worldwide Small and Midsize Business Strategy, HP. “With today’s announcement, HP continues to enrich its Total Care offerings to meet the evolving needs of our SMB customers.”

“AMI has surveyed thousands of SMBs in over a dozen countries over the last four quarters, and noted that the current economy has greatly changed the way they purchase technology products and services,” said Anil Miglani, senior vice president, AMI-Partners. “As we exit the global recession, SMBs will try to protect their existing technology investments while making new investments to grow their business and strengthen customer relationships. HP is well-prepared to help SMB customers achieve this balanced growth through its comprehensive Total Care portfolio.”

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Intel aims to change the future of I/O with Light Peak optical cables

0 Comments September 24, 2009 : By Shane Pitman · Category : News

Intel_logoDuring his keynote address at the Intel Developer Conference forum in San Francisco, David Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group, revealed a new a new optical cable technology that could eliminate the copper wiring traditionally used to connect many of today’s electronics and components. Codenamed “Light Peak,” this technology could vastly change the landscape of input output (I/O) performance on everything from connecting consumer electronic devices, to how we connect external devices to PC’s and servers.

Initially, Light Peak cables will be able to deliver 10GB/s of bandwidth (fast enough to transfer a full Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds), with the potential ability to scale to 100GB/s over the next decade. Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, workstations, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.

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Intel reveals latest Core i7 mobile CPU’s, details on future chips

0 Comments : By Shane Pitman · Category : News

Intel_logoIntel has unveiled their latest Core i7 processors for laptops, and also announced details of upcoming mobile technologies, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, California. During the keynote address by David (Dadi) Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group, the newest Core i7 processors were presented as being focused towards the most demanding PC users who create digital video, play intense games or run compute-intensive business applications. These new quad core processors and chipset are based on Intel’s Nehalem platform, and include Intel’s Turbo Boost, and Hyper-Threading technologies.

“Staying connected on an increasingly broad array of mobile devices has become the most exciting and quickly evolving part of technology,” said Perlmutter. “Intel is delivering the total mobile experience on each device, offering different levels of performance and power in sleek form factors coupled with compatibility, a superior mobile Internet experience and embedded WiMAX wireless broadband. We’re truly taking mobility to the next level of cool.”

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