HP unveils mid-market disk backup

Aimed at small businesses, HP has launched a disk-based backup and recovery system, which it claims will make protection and disaster recovery more reliable and affordable. The HP StorageWorks D2D Backup System is, according to the company, at least 50 per cent cheaper than competing systems and can be integrated into existing network-based IT environments. The company said that restoring lost or corrupted files would be easier on the new systems as backup data is stored online, where is can be retrieved in minutes instead of hours. ...more

No room at the exchange?

Oftel shuffles the pack again for the delivery of broadband communication services. BT will be required to provide a 'broadband interconnection' product that will allow competing operators to combine BT's DSL network with their own networks. Currently, companies wanting to provide broadband DSL services are faced with a stark choice. ...more

Microsoft responds to EU threat

Microsoft has begun to make concessions designed to head off the threat of a substantial fine being imposed by the EU, if it finds the US company in breach of European anti-trust regulations. The EU's investigation into Microsoft has some parallels with the prolonged legal battle in the US, concerned as it is with determining whether the company used Windows' dominant market position to gain - or leverage to use the current vernacular - control of the server software market. When Microsoft introduced Windows 2000 it included a network security technology called Kerberos. ...more

Iomega gets hot to burn

Iomega has announced HotBurn, its new CD authoring software, claiming that in tests it 'performed faster than the industry leader for users of all experience levels'. HotBurn includes two-step music and data-CD creation, one-step duplication and multiple copying of a source CD, organised into a single interface screen. There is also a 'Best Of' feature that allows you to make compilation CDs without having to copy components from several CDs to your hard disk. ...more

Researcher sacked for Microsoft monopoly attack

A computer security firm has sacked one of its employees for contributing to a research paper which claims that the dominance of Microsoft's Windows operating system is to blame for the increased vulnerability of computers to attack. Dan Geer was principal author of the paper entitled 'Cyber Insecurity: the cost of monopoly' - available as a PDF, which was backed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). He argues that, 'As fast as the world's computing infrastructure is growing, vulnerability to attack is growing faster still. ...more