cloud storage

Google's introduction of free online storage for any type of file serves as a reminder that storing a gigabyte of data in the Internet cloud can vary in price from free to US$3.50 per, and that's just what Google charges its customers.

In the coming weeks, Google Docs users will be able to store more of their important files online, where they can access them easily and share them with others, according to a Tuesday post on The Official Google Blog.

Riverbed Technology has a plan to help companies accelerate access to applications and storage resources that are located in a cloud computing environment and delivered over the Internet to private data centers, distributed branch offices and mobile end users.

Google has always been generous with its storage space for Gmail and Picasa, giving users roughly 7GB and 1GB, respectively, for free. For most people, this is plenty of room to accumulate e-mail and post high-resolution photos online and have them backed up and protected by Google's powerful servers. What some of you might not know is that Google offers additional storage at a price. Now those prices have been slashed and the storage increased — but is it worth it?

At Storage Networking World a couple of weeks ago, the focus was on solid-state drives and cloud technologies.

A cloud storage provider that designed its system from the ground up to meet enterprise needs is ready to offer its service to the world.

Cloud storage platforms need to mature before they are enterprise-ready, particularly for customers in highly regulated industries, IT professionals attending Storage Networking World in Phoenix, Ariz. this week said.

I’m still in the audience at the DEMOFall conference, and still taking in demonstrations of new products and services. One of the cooler ideas this morning is Symform, a small-business remote-backup service. Technically, it’s utterly unlike services such as Mozy and Carbonite: Those services store everything in massive server farms, but Symform is farm-free–it uses peer-to-peer technology to store backups on the PCs of other Symform users. If you wanna back up 10GB of data, for instance, you agree to devote 10GB of disk space to other folks’ backups–and to leave your computer on 80 percent of the time.

A storage company emerged from stealth mode this week with software designed to efficiently manage the file serving needs of Internet applications such as social networks, online ad serving and software-as-a-service. 

A start-up company founded by former Microsoft and Amazon engineers is launching a distributed cloud storage service that uses the spare disk drive capacity in the back offices of small and medium-size businesses to create a collective pool of storage shared by all participants.

NetApp Inc. has unveiled products and services that support cloud computing architectures used in the data centers of its enterprise-class customers.

Remember the early days of PDAs? They revolutionized the concept of a planner by combining calendars, contacts and notes into a compact, easy-to-carry device that could be connected to and synced with your computer.