Scott Gardner has been living in the world of chip design and manufacture for decades, and he is perhaps the most technically adept of anyone I know writing about chips today. When we recognized the importance of the Microsoft-ARM alliance, we...

Vendor Research

McAfee has launched a total revamp of its SecurityAlliance Partner Program, bringing the vast majority of its partners under one system. This is a major change for solution providers in almost all of McAfee's distinct partner programs;...

You have watched the industry strategic energies move over time from fewer users of more powerful machines, to a global base of users of many types of less-expensive computing and communications devices. It is almost fair to wonder about the...

A little jostling for market share is always a good thing, and the occasional sector blowup or segment technology revolution keeps everyone on their toes and healthy. But what happens when a global duopoly in the most strategic technology sector...

Intel Corporation and McAfee, Inc. announced a definitive agreement for Intel to purchase McAfee. The purchase price is currently set at USD$7.68 billion where Intel will purchase all of McAfee's common stock for $48 per share. The deal is...

A couple of months ago, I predicted that 2010 would be a record year in sales for two key industries: Personal Computers and Cars. For those who understand the roles these two items play in the global economic universe, this is all...

Apple and Google had interlocking boards, Adobe was Apple's lifelong development partner and ally, and even Intel had come back from the Dark Side of Wintel to make the chips used in Apple machines. What a happy family, all playing around the...

(14-Apr-10) The chief executive of technology reseller Softchoice Corp. is seeing a strong rebound in corporate spending on computers and servers, a trend consistent with chip maker Intel's results as the economy recovers. "We are seeing...

Intel's Xeon 5500 processors have been a boon to two areas of server management: power savings and virtualization. The recession in 2009 meant a slow start for the new technology, but deployment will start gaining speed.

In technology, the ancient regime was driven by Wintel (Windows and Intel), mostly: a famously paranoid Andy Grove, paired with Bill Gates, the most competitive strategist (or strategic competitor) in the world. Everyone else got table scraps.

(8-Feb-10) There probably isn't a week that goes by without an enterprise IT manager hearing one of their users lament "why can't I have one of those cool iMacs instead of this boring, grey PC?" It's enough to make even the strongest IT manager...

Citrix announced XenDesktop at its 2008 Synergy conference and, within one year, Citrix is already up to Version 3. Explore the new features, future advances, and how Citrix is addressing the top priorities for virtualization.

The light at the end of the tunnel for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. may very well be emanating from Markham, Ont. Over the past 3½ years, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based microchip design company has racked up losses totalling more than...

Due to the rising costs of electricity and the supply limitations of certain utility providers, small enterprises must evaluate their energy consumption and find ways to reduce it. The server room presents an optimal target for power reduction...

On July 28, 2008 VMware answered the challenge of Microsoft's $28 Hyper-V hypervisor. By providing ESXi at no cost, VMware hopes to slow some of the expected defection to the Microsoft offering. For enterprise data centers the hypervisor...

At various points over the past few years Worldwide Interoperability Access (WiMAX) has run between being heralded as the next big thing to being dismissed as all but dead. The truth lies somewhere in between, but WiMAX will undoubtedly find a...

Info-Tech's June 2008 Metal Market report sees quad-core processors displacing dual-core while prices remain steady. Expect increasingly competitive Apple Intel-based server pricing. IT buyers pricing x86 application servers should look first to...

Storage network vendors are hyping Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for managing storage on converged high speed Ethernet networks. Alternatively, FCoE can merely be seen as Fibre Channel vendors fighting the inevitable advance of iSCSI on 10...

At the end of March, HP introduced two new ProLiant servers. These are marketed as low cost, energy efficient units. While they live up to those claims, they also provide lower performance ? which is not necessarily bad for enterprises needing...

Info-Tech's January 2008 Metal Market report sees continued deep discounts on AMD-based servers, as well as increasingly competitive Apple Intel-based server pricing. IT buyers pricing x86 application servers should look first to units based on...

Apple continues to update the hardware and software for its Xserve rack-mount server. For Apple Mac-centric businesses that want a robust and recognized basic workgroup server, the Xserve is worth consideration.

The hard drive is long overdue for a makeover. Its heavily mechanical nature makes it susceptible to eventual failure as well as a source for performance bottlenecks. Hybrid technologies that incorporate flash-based cache memory to improve speed...