Storage area networking also took a share of the CeBIT spotlight, as vendors sought to encourage new uses of the traditionally static networking medium. Cisco Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif., rolled out product enhancements to enable enterprises to use storage area networks more efficiently.
Meanwhile, adding an element of flexibility to the health care industry's storage usage, IBM and Siemens AG's Medical Solutions division, in Munich, Germany, unveiled a storage-on-demand service tailored to hospitals and clinics. The notion behind IBM's e-business-on-demand effort is to allow enterprises to buy IT the way they buy electricity—paying only for what they use.
An increase in the use of MRIs, X-rays and other high- resolution digital imaging has produced expanding medical files that must be stored for long periods of time. The growing volume of data requires a high storage capacity, but hospitals cannot always afford the initial investment for it. With storage on demand, hospitals and clinics pay only for the storage they use.
With a similar philosophy, Hewlett-Packard Co. updated its automated metering technology that measures the processing power used by a CPU or server. The "pay per use" service allows an enterprise to pay only for actual usage on a monthly basis, and the usage data is automatically collected, encrypted and sent to the Palo Alto, Calif., company for billing.
HP's latest metering technology reads the use of each CPU, which can help an enterprise better respond to changes in power demand. Like IBM, HP is developing a series of on-demand offerings to save enterprises from paying for resources they do not need.
Data traffic management companies also displayed a range of updated tools to enable more efficient traffic usage and reduce networking costs. Extreme Networks Inc., also of Santa Clara, incorporated new features into its traffic management service for enterprise campus networks. The features allow advanced rate shaping so that a network manager can set bandwidth thresholds to better control incoming and outgoing traffic