Articles about Pillar
Larry Ellison hands back $575m from Oracle's Pillar slurp
Oracle chief exec Larry Ellison has agreed to waive a potential payout of $575m to clear up accusations of a conflict of interest over Oracle's acquisition of Pillar Data Systems, a company Ellison owned.
Ellison agreed to hand back over 95 per cent of an "earn-out" payday he got when Oracle slurped Pillar in 2011, after two …
Oracle's Sun rises over ZFS and Pillar
Oracle says version 12c of its database works better with Oracle's own Sun ZFS and Pillar Axiom storage, with better performance, easier storage config, and faster test and development set-up. But the ZFS product seems preferred over the Axiom.
Oracle shoots out the following claims:
The Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Pillar …
Pillar Data ditches staffers, shrugs
Pillar Data has fired some of its workforce, but it's no big deal according to the company.
ESG's senior analyst and co-founder Steve Duplessie revealed the news in a tweet late yesterday, saying: "Looks like Pillar canned a bunch of folks. Unfortunately predictable" — implying that the firm was downsizing in response to …
Oracle buying Ellison-backed Pillar Data
Oracle is buying CEO Larry Ellison's privately-funded Pillar Data Systems storage company.
Pillar was founded in 2001 by Mike Workman, its CEO, and funded by Ellison's own investment vehicle, Tako Ventures. It has devised, built and is selling its Axiom storage arrays, ones using a 3-box design, with storage Bricks, up to 8 …
How that Oracle and Pillar earn-out really works
Comment
Pillar investors will only receive cash from Oracle for the Pillar acquisition if Pillar revenues in 2014 exceed net losses from 2011 to 2014.
The acquisition is structured so Oracle boss Larry Ellison's half billion dollar loan to Pillar is turned into preferred stock with other investors holding common stock. Larry gets 1.5 …
Pillar pillages SPC-1 benchmark
Pillar has announced a sparkling SPC-1 benchmark, bettering IBM's Storwize V7000. Oddly EMC is not present in SPC-1 results and NetApp's results are 2008 vintage. What's going on?
The SPC-1 benchmark is for block-access storage, not for filers, where the SPECsfs2008 benchmark is used. There are high-end SPC-1 results, ranging …
Pillar offers storage clunkers cash too
Pillar is running a Cash for Storage Clunkers promotion, following in Xiotech's footsteps.
The company is offering to replace a customer's whole storage array and is working with a technology financing company, Key Equipment Finance, so the customers can turn in old products from any vendor, get a value for the old product and …
Pillar first past 2TB post
Pillar Data is the first manufacturer to incorporate 2TB SATA drives in its arrays, doubling the Axiom product's capacity.
CEO Mike Workman says the firm is using Western Digital's 5400rpm 2TB drive. Pillar was also the first array manufacturer to use 1TB drives, which came from Hitachi GST. Array subsystem manufacturer Xyratex …
Pillar and Xiotech whip Exchange competition
Pillar Data and Xiotech are much better at providing storage for 8,000 Exchange 2007 users than the competition in terms of drive spindle needs and response latency.
Microsoft has encouraged its storage partners to run benchmarks at varying levels of Exchange user populations for both Exchange 2007 and 2010. We looked at the …
When Oracle bought Pillar for £zilch
Comment
It was a telling omission when Oracle introduced a storage guy to talk about why Pillar Data was such a great acquisition. It wasn't Mike Workman, Pillar's CEO and founder, but Phil Bullinger, Oracle's SVP for Disk Storage.
Contrast that with Dell parading Phil Soran, Compellent's CEO, when it bought that company, or HP showing …
Pillar refresh alert as R5 hits the streets
Pillar has a near-term refresh of its Axiom array coming by the end of the year, in the form of a release 5 (R5) system, to be followed by more updates in 2011.
R5 is focused on a management update which will lay the groundwork for the management of multiple Axioms through one pane of glass. Mike Brewer, Pillar's VP for …
Pillar rejigs Axiom for flash
Pillar is redesigning its Axiom storage array technology to use NAND flash memory better, with disk drives used for commodity storage.
Pillar CEO Mike Workman has blogged "A trend toward SSDs over HDDs will cause all storage arrays to be re-architected. Today’s arrays are not built properly for maximum utilization of the …
Pillar juices Axiom software
Pillar is adding four features to its Axiom software to make arrays protect data better and operate more efficiently.
It's adding its own array-based replication to extend its current FalconStor and InMage functions with policy-based Application-Aware profiles to replicate data asynchronously between Axiom arrays.
Pillar is …
Ford's B-Max: Fiesta-based runaround that goes THUNK
Vulture at the Wheel
This is the most sensible car you can buy. That's not necessarily a good thing. The Ford B-Max takes all the things you’d look for in practicality and turns them up to 11. However, in doing so it turns emotion down to zero.
Look familiar? The Ford B-MAX is based on its Fiesta Look familiar? The Ford B-MAX is based on its Fiesta …
Oracle/Sun may resell Pillar arrays
Pillar Data storage could be resold by Oracle's Sun hardware unit in an Oracle-Sun-Pillar combination, threatening Sun's existing HDS OEM deal.
The rumours, floated in ComputerWorld, Pillar has replaced Intel solid state drives with ones from STEC
Pillar's Axiom array scales to 1.6PB of tiered storage which can be tuned to …
Oracle crashes all-flash bash: Behold, our hybrid FS1 arrays
Welcome back to SAN array land, Oracle. Larry Ellison's company has reinvented its Pillar Axiom 600 SAN array as a hybrid flash/disk array, the FS1-2, with auto-tiering and noisy neighbours sorted.
It is a general-purpose hybrid array but tuned for Oracle software. Calling its new storage box the Flash Storage System (FS1), the …
Hamas hacks Israeli TV sat channel to broadcast pics of Gaza wounded
Gaza leaders Hamas took over an Israeli satellite channel for few minutes on Monday to broadcast pictures of Gaza wounded.
Viewers who tuned into Israeli Channel 10 reported seeing images of people wounded from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza as well as propaganda messages promising more rocket strikes on Israel from Hamas' military …
Gartner: Array makers. Think performance counts? WRONG
A Gartner report looking at high-end enterprise storage arrays published this month has concluded that because of SSDs, an array's performance is no longer a differentiator in its own right.
“Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Array” was published on 7 March. It put HDS kit out front for "Best Overall", …
Pillar rains on EMC's parade
Pillar Data is raining insults on EMC's CX4 usable capacity parade.
Chuck Hollis, VP for tech alliances at EMC, reckons EMC's CX4 delivers 70 per cent of its raw capacity to users as usable capacity and pooh-poohs HP EVA and NetApp FAS arrays for only delivering 48 per cent and 34 per cent respectively in the same Exchange …
Pillar's Axiom 600 gets multicore brain transplant
Pillar Data has increased the performance of its Axiom 600 array and laid the foundation for future systems, with a doubled core count in its Slammer controllers and 700,000 lines of new Axiom ONE software code.
The Axiom 600 is Pillar's high-end enterprise-level array, with iSCSI and Fibre Channel block storage and also network …
Pillar juices flash drive box
Pillar Data Axiom storage arrays can go a whole lot faster, use less energy and be more reliable, thanks to a range of new features from flash drive enclosures to pre-emptive copies.
A Pillar Axiom array is composed of storage enclosures or Bricks, I/O controllers called Slammers, and a Pilot management component. The company is …
Pillar towers over rivals in best value storage
To get the most bang for your storage buck, you should buy a Pillar Data Axiom 600 - according to the Storage Performance Council (SPC).
The SPC-1 benchmark measures the IOPS performance of storage arrays and the cost per IOPS, both in a standard way so that different vendors' storage products can be compared. Pillar Data has …
EMC rains on Pillar's parade
Strangely, on the day Pillar formally announces its faster Axiom with boosted controller performance, EMC has announced denser CLARiiON and Celerra arrays with 2TB drive support.
The higher-density CLARiiON CX4s have double the capacity of existing systems in half the floorspace, due to a new rack design. They support 2TB SATA …
EMC, HP blockbuster 'merger' shocker comes a cropper
+Comment
EMC has been holding secret merger talks with HP that have since stalled, according to industry sources.
The negotiations are said to have lasted almost 12 months, during which Dell executives mulled buying parts of EMC. But at the heart of the discussion was a proposed $132bn merger of the storage giant and HP, according to …
Pillar Data - Larry Ellison's other storage company
Analysis
Oracle buying Sun Microsystems has caused people to wonder about the future of Pillar Data, Larry's other storage company.
Pillar Data is backed by Larry Ellison's personal investment vehicle, Tako Ventures, possibly to the tune of half a billion dollars.
Founded in 2001 the Silicon Valley-based firm has developed the Axiom …
150 pink slips for Pillar
The phony recession war is over and the first real storm cloud has hit the storage industry. Pillar Data has laid off 150 employees - that's 30 per cent of its workforce - to help it survive the recession.
Pillar Data is a tier 2 storage array company along with 3PAR and Compellent, both of whom have just reported their first …
Pillar pumps performance in Axiom array
Pillar Data Systems is topping off its lineup Axiom storage systems with a box supporting a healthy chunk more capacity and performance than its predecessor.
The modus operandi of the Larry Ellison-funded unstart-up is storage efficiency — and this round it's slapping some guarantees on the new Axiom 600 disk array, promising …
Pillar adds 'application awareness' to Axiom arrays
Storage unstartup Pillar Data Systems is hawking a new application-aware storage feature for its Axiom arrays as "the world's first and only true" form of the management service.
While it's par for the course for a vendor to claim global eminence and dominance in anything within throwing distance of their boxes, this particular …
Activist investor plans to de-federate EMC: report
Activist investors have taken a billion-dollar stake in EMC in order to break apart its federation and spin out VMware, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Quoting folks familiar with the matter, The Journal says Elliot Management Corporation, an outfit financial rating service Hoovers describes as a hedge fund that "takes an …
Oracle refreshes RAM-crammed ZFS array line
After updating its old Pillar Axiom array line with the hybrid FS1 array a few months ago, Oracle has refreshed its ZFS array line with a bigger, faster generation and a quasi in-memory design.
Larry Ellison's company announced the third generation ZS3 appliances back in October last year. Fourteen months later, we have the …
Pillar embraces Intel SSDs
Marking Intel's first appearance in the enterprise storage array solid state disk (SSD) market, Pillar Data is launching SSD enclosures for its Axiom arrays in June.
Axiom is Pillar's array line with different levels of storage service available from a application-aware quality of service (QoS) system. The arrays use storage …
French drug dealers regretfully announce 'temporary closure'
A bunch of French drug dealers demonstrated a touch of Gallic narcohumour earlier this week by announcing the "temporary closure" of their regular public point of sale.
According to local paper Le Dauphiné Libéré, a poster taped to a concrete pillar under a block of flats in Grenoble's rue Albert-Thomas informed punters: " …
Management tools lead VMware through $5bn annual revenue barrier
VMware has cracked the $US5bn barrier for the first time on the back of 17 per cent year-on-year revenue growth it says it can repeat again during 2014.
The company also reported Q4 revenue of $1.48bn, up 15 per cent from 2012's fourth quarter.
Virtzilla's current hero is its management and automation software. Just about …
'Internet Freedom Panel' to keep web overlord ICANN out of Russian hands – new proposal
A seemingly independent panel with authority over domain name system overseer ICANN has been proposed in a new US law bill.
The Defending Internet Freedom Act [PDF], put forward by Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA), would see the creation of a board made up of techies and reps from the domain name world, as well as a new consortium …
Pillar packs more storage in Axiom boxes
Storage unstart-up Pillar Data Systems has contracted a case of the market's green fever, but focusing its appeal to data centers worried over skyrocketing operational costs through power and cooling, but the size of their box.
Pillar feels the eco-friendly hype-masters have committed the sin of overlooking the size of the boat …
Sun sale: Pillar checks itself
Interview
Is Pillar Data threatened by Oracle's purchase of Sun? El Reg talked with Bob Maness, Pillar Data's worldwide marketing VP, about business, flash memory and Oracle's Sun acquisition.
Pillar Data is the Larry Ellison-funded storage start-up delivering its Axiom storage arrays with application-aware templates and storage quality …
Pillar, EMC, and HP bow to the Oracle
Pillar has added new Oracle software pick-and-click tuning tools to its Axiom storage array management software to simplify an Oracle DBA's day. EMC and HP have also added Oracle-specific versions of their products.
This adding of app-specific configurations or tuning templates is starting to become a trend amongst storage …
Micron tears away cloak to reveal its Gen3 Hybrid Memory Cube
SMC
Micron has revealed some of the goals – and the manufacturing challenges it faces – for the development of its next-generation "all silicon" Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC).
Micron's current HMC Gen2, engineering samples of which having been released this September, stacks up layers of memory cells, each on an organic laminate …
Democrats introduce net neutrality legislation in Senate and House
In a coordinated move, Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives to enshrine network neutrality principles in law until the Federal Communications Commission rules on the matter.
"This bill ensures that consumers, not their Internet service provider, are in the driver's seat …
Ellison's storage Pillar sits at fork in the road
Comment
Larry Ellison founded Pillar Data on the premise it would become the next EMC or NetApp, and go through an IPO or be bought. On its way there it sees a new system that could replace 100 NetApp filers coming by 2012.
This perspective on Pillar was given by its CEO and CFO at a customer summit in Phoenix, Arizona on March 10. CFO …
Slippery Google greases up, aims to squirm out of EU privacy grasp
Special Report
Google is wriggling desperately to escape new European privacy rules that could force it to take some responsibility for what information it republishes in response to a given search – in particular a search of someone's name.
The European Parliament voted in favour of data protection reforms in March, which the EU's press …
EMC pinches top Oracle engineer and Microsoft bod for Isilon
EMC's scale-out filer shipper Isilon is scaling up its organisation; Oracle's top storage SVP, Phil Bullinger, is moving from the Redwood Shores-headquartered firm to EMC subsidiary Isilon, and a Microsoftie is coming aboard as Isilon's COO.
Bullinger is joining EMC's Isilon unit as its senior veep for engineering and operations …
Oracle tries to bust out of storage also-ran box
Oracle says it is seeing strong growth in its NAS, SAN and tape storage portfolio. Maybe a high-end Axiom array is coming but, even so, there's no sign Oracle is about to emerge from the IDC Storage Tracker's "Others" category.
The data excludes Oracle's engineered Exa- systems (Exadata, Exalytics, etc) and refers to basic …
Just what is Oracle going to plop out as its golden storage egg?
Analysis
What's going on with Oracle storage? Besides tape, which seems to be doing fine, does the IT giant have a long-term, viable external storage array product line at all?
Oracle's general hardware business is in decline. Witness the chart below showing quarterly overall sales including hardware product revenues; storage sales …
UK channel firms rabbit-punch recession in Q4: Sales are HUGE
Blighty is again the largest tech sales territory in the European channels* after distributors reported a near double-digit growth spurt in Q4, fuelled by mobility, software and er... desktops.
Numbers are in from Context, which tracks all major wholesalers' sales-out data - the kit that customers are actually buying - showing …
Sun dying on its arse behind the Oracle walls
Analysis
Playing with the annual revenue numbers Oracle has just released indicates Sun HW-related revenues fell by $1.4 billion from 2011 to 2012.
We'd better explain our reasoning. Oracle hardware products and support revenues were $6.944 billion in its fiscal 2011. They were $6.302 billion in fiscal 2012, a fall of $642 million. Some …
Bring us your baffled Backup Exec biz bods, beg Axcient, Zetta
Axcient and Zetta have seized the moment and are offering migration services to Backup Exec Cloud users facing being left out in the unprotected cold by Symantec's withdrawal from the Backup Exec Cloud offering.
Symantec has announced it is shuttering its Backup Exec Cloud service, leaving users to make alternative arrangements …
Oracle's mighty column stuffs databases
OpenWorld
Oracle says it can squeeze its databases in ZFS and Pillar Data arrays with Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC).
HCC is applied to OLTP databases and data warehouses, with a claimed 10x to 50x compression for most datasets. Oracle says that by using HCC with ZFS or Pillar Axiom arrays its customers can throw out EMC or NetApp …
Pillar pops up in Europe
Storage Expo, London
Pillar Data called its competitors "dumb" as it opened its European operations this week. The Larry Ellison-funded storage networking unstart-up is the latest to claim it will revolutionise the market with systems that do more than anyone else for less money.
Its Axiom boxes can provide both file-based NAS services and block- …
Salesforce buys into cloud marketing with ExactTarget
Salesforce is a acquiring ExactTarget as the digital CRM company tries to do to marketing what it has done to CRM.
The $2.5bn acquisition was announced by Salesforce on Tuesday, and will see the company make a tender offer of $33.75 per share in cash for all outstanding shares of ExactTarget – a substantial premium above the $22 …
