A week out from its annual Think event (this year in San Francisco) IBM has made a handful of enhancements to its storage portfolio. These enhancements run the gamut from containers to blockchain to IBM’s Cloud Private. The company has also made enhancements to its AI tools and data protection portfolio. 

Today Dell EMC announced new and enhanced capabilities to its portfolio of backup storage appliances, Dell EMC Data Domain and Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA). The added and enhanced capabilities aim to improve performance and add flexibility and value in the multi-cloud world. The new enhancements are also good for SMBs giving them more choice

Today Arcserve is releasing a series of appliances that they refer to as the first all-in-one, purpose-built appliances designed for disaster recovery and application availability.  The newly released models will be the third generation of their appliance series. When we reviewed one of the previous generation appliances, we found it to be straightforward to configure, require minimal ongoing management,

Today Seagate Technology reported financial results for the second quarter ended December 28, 2018. The company saw lower numbers in general this quarter compared to last or this time in the previous year. The company’s stock is down overall throughout the quarter. 

Dell EMC has announced the Tactical Microsoft Azure Stack, a ruggedized and field-deployable solution designed specifically for tactical edge environments in areas a such as government, military, energy and mining. It is based on the company’s all-flash Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, enabling Azure consistent-cloud to operating environments with limited or no network

This week’s News Bits we look at a number of small announcements, small in terms of the content, not the impact they have. Seagate releases 2TB drive for Sony’s PlayStation 4. VIAVI launches Observer GigaFlow. SwiftStack supports Veeam Cloud Tier. QNAP releases MediQPACS. SolarWinds unveils Flow Tool Bundle.

According to our good friend Chris Mellor at The Register, the HCI company Maxta looks as though it is going to shutter its doors. Mellor heard from four sources, one informed him that Maxta had given 65 employees their final paycheck and ended their healthcare benefits. Other sources reported to Mellor that the staff were told Monday

Today Dell introduced a new portfolio of next-generation endpoint security solutions, Dell SafeGuard and Response. This new portfolio represents collaboration with Secureworks and CrowdStrike. These new solutions are designed to prevent, detect and respond to the shifting threat landscape that modern IT environments face.

Today Pliops announced that it has received an additional $30 million in Series B funding. This funding round was led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, with participation from all Series A investors including Intel Capital, State of Mind Ventures (SOMV) and Viola Ventures, along with strategic investors Western Digital Capital and Xilinx Inc. This brings Pliops