Alacritech, of course, is thrilled. "Microsoft has done a fabulous job of validating the use of TOE in Windows," says Joe Gervais, Alacritech's director of product marketing. "For Alacritech, this is a pretty big endorsement of TOE."
Nancy Marrone, senior analyst with Enterprise Storage Group Inc., says the test results are an important proof point for Alacritech: "It's great for them to have that validation."
As iSCSI has been much slower to take off than it first anticipated, Alacritech has pitched its TCP-acceleration cards to the NAS market as a way to speed up file performance. Last year it conducted a similar performance test with Compaq and struck partnerships with several Linux-based NAS vendors (see Compaq, Alacritech: We Kick NAS and Alacritech Turns to Linux).
So how do Alacritech's TCP/IP accelerators contribute to such increases in performance? While TCP-related activity is usually processed by software, Alacritech's technology offloads it instead to the network adapter, where it is processed by specialized hardware, allowing for more efficient data delivery. "TCP in hardware has orders of magnitude better performance than TCP in software," says Gervais.
But Alacritech only offers a partial offload of the server, unlike other vendors, including Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT) and Intel, which are aiming to offer iSCSI acceleration and total offload of the server (see Adaptec Shipping iSCSI).
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
