Seagate has announced that the company is launching its Duet external hard drive, which would be, in all regards, a run-of-the-mill external hard drive (based on the company's Backup Plus Portable Drive), were it not for the fact that it runs tailored software that syncs its contents with the Amazon Drive service. The drive automatically downloads and uploads content from (and to) Amazon Drive to enable instant and offline access to data stored in the cloud - allowing you to not only store your data on the Cloud, but also keep a physical copy of it with you.

ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced the addition of the new ElephantDrive cloud backup App for all ASUSTOR NAS devices. ASUSTOR NAS users will be able to download and install this new App via App Central. ElephantDrive provides an online cloud backup service that allows data from ASUSTOR NAS devices to be backed up in real time or via scheduling to ElephantDrive's encrypted cloud storage space. Data can also be conveniently restored in the event of an accident, significantly enhancing data availability.

"We are delighted to begin our collaboration with ASUSTOR. Our goal has been to provide seamlessly integrated cloud backup solutions for NAS devices, so it was only a matter of time before we offered support for ASUSTOR's powerful and user-friendly devices," said Michael Fisher, CEO at ElephantDrive. "We are convinced that the combination of ASUSTOR's hardware and ElephantDrive's cloud services will satisfy the most demanding users."

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and subsidiary of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, is showcasing a wide range of HPC server platforms optimized for enterprise, storage and data center applications at SC16 this week in Salt Lake City's Salt Palace Convention Center.

TYAN's comprehensive HPC platforms span a wide range of hardware specifications. The Intel Xeon E7-based, 4U quad-socket FT76-B7922 offers a memory capacity of 6TB and supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for the most demanding HPC users; the Intel Xeon E5-based, 4U dual-socket FT77C-B7079 supports up to 8x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for highly parallelized application deployment, the 2U dual-socket TA80-B7071 supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for large-scale production deployment in various high performance computing segments; and the 1U dual-socket GA80-B7081 supports up to 3x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for ISVs, universities, and small businesses looking for parallelized application development or proof of concept solution deployment.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today released the TS-x31P NAS series, including the TS-131P, TS-231P, and TS-431P. Powered by an AnnapurnaLabs, an Amazon company Alpine AL-212 dual-core 1.7GHz processor, this series provides a high-performance and secure private cloud NAS solution tailored for home, SOHO and workgroup users. In addition to basic requirements such as file storage, sharing and backup, the TS-x31P series supports value-added cloud-based note-taking app, centralized email account management, contacts management, and abundant multimedia applications.

"A cost-efficient and reliable NAS solution is undoubtedly a key investment for small businesses and organizations to improve workflow efficiency; whereas home users generally like simple and practical storage devices with real-time data accessibility that helps create a modern digital home," said Dan Lin, Product Manager of QNAP. "The TS-x31P is designed to fulfill such user needs to ensure data security and to bring a comprehensive business and multimedia experience," added Lin.

In another business-deal-gone-right for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in chinese soil, the company is now going to provide China's Alibaba giant with server chips with which to power the company's cloud vision. Whilst Alibaba is most commonly known due to its e-commerce activities (through the Aliexpress and Taobao brands), the chinese company is diversifying, even going so far as entering the entertainment space. Now, Alibaba is bidding to carve itself an even larger piece of the cloud market from the likes of Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's Web Services.

The deal was announced this Friday at the Alibaba Computing Conference by Lisa Su (AMD's CEO) and Simon Hu (president of Alibaba Cloud, the chinese giant's cloud computing arm). Through it, AMD will see its Radeon Pro chips supporting and expanding upon the increasingly-in-demand cloud computing capabilities of the chinese company, which already powers around 35% of China's websites.

With the global digital signage market expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6% over the next five years, Acer, with its expansive offering of hardware, software, and services, will continue to provide solutions that evolve with the ever-growing demand for innovative display solutions.

Building on decades of experience in computing and communication, Acer has a complete technology offering supporting digital signage solutions, including hardware such as LFDs (Large Format Displays, up to 65 inches), PCs, and software and cloud services via its highly-scalable Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC) platform. This total solution offering combined with a global sales and support network makes Acer the ideal digital signage partner for system integrators (SI) and content providers.

Today's digital signage solutions combine the power of technology to broadcast content at scheduled times, and allow content providers to push out changes across a network of displays almost instantaneously. They are used to show a nearly unlimited variety of messages in public areas, such as timetables and at check-in information at airports and stations; directions or meeting notices at the reception and entrances of schools, hospitals, and hotels; special promotions and floor plans at retail stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, and more.

The FTC posted this press release today: Taiwan-based computer hardware maker ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that critical security flaws in its routers put the home networks of hundreds of thousands of consumers at risk. The administrative complaint also charges that the routers' insecure "cloud" services led to the compromise of thousands of consumers' connected storage devices, exposing their sensitive personal information on the internet. The proposed consent order will require ASUS to establish and maintain a comprehensive security program subject to independent audits for the next 20 years.

"The Internet of Things is growing by leaps and bounds, with millions of consumers connecting smart devices to their home networks," said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Routers play a key role in securing those home networks, so it's critical that companies like ASUS put reasonable security in place to protect consumers and their personal information."

ASUS marketed its routers as including numerous security features that the company claimed could "protect computers from any unauthorized access, hacking, and virus attacks" and "protect [the] local network against attacks from hackers." Despite these claims, the FTC's complaint alleges that ASUS didn't take reasonable steps to secure the software on its routers.

Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in connected storage solutions, today updated its prosumer solutions with My Cloud EX2 Ultra, a high-performance, two-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. The My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS is designed from the ground up for creative professionals and prosumers that need to automatically sync content across computers, easily share files and folders and enjoy multiple backup options so they can create their own personalized digital library with ease.

"We know our My Cloud users, especially creative professionals, need comprehensive solutions as digital storage needs continue to soar as well as the need for ongoing streaming capability," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Branded Products. "With the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, creative professionals are able to combine high performance with multi-tasking optimization and data protection to create a NAS system that simplifies their workflow and provides peace-of-mind."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today launched its first 10TB enterprise capacity hard disk drive (HDD), merging high capacity with the industry's lowest power and weight available in a 10TB drive, to meet the growing storage requirements for private and public cloud-based data centers. The Seagate Enterprise 3.5 Capacity HDD has been selected by enterprise market leaders globally for its ability to address storage demands unlike any other technology in the industry.

"Cloud-based data center storage needs are expanding faster than many current infrastructures can sustain, rendering the capacity demands of users a herculean task for cloud managers," said Mark Re, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Seagate. "Built on our years of research and development of sealed-drive technology, our new helium-based enterprise drive is designed precisely to help data-centric organizations worldwide solve the needs of their growing storage business."

PROMISE Technology marked its foray into the consumer electronics market today at CES with the unveiling of Apollo, a personal Cloud appliance and app that gives users and their circles or groups full control over the storage and selective sharing of their digital content. Designed with families, small businesses, and small office / home office in mind, Apollo makes it easy for a group of members to store, access and share selected data from wherever they happen to be.

This week at CES, PROMISE will demonstrate Apollo's many features at booth #21731, located in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center Tech East. Apollo will be showcased at the Showstoppers media-only event on January 6 at the Wynn Hotel, Table F4. Apollo is a small, quiet appliance that stores huge amounts of data-up to 4 TB. It's a valuable asset to consumers who find it difficult to manage treasured family photos and videos that proliferate like wildfire on family members' phones, tablets and laptops and at increasingly high resolutions.

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces a new, high-capacity addition to the MC04 Series launched in May of last year. The 6TB version of the MC04 Series of enterprise high-capacity HDDs is designed for bulk storage systems and servers supporting cloud-based applications and scale-out workloads. With an industry standard 3.5-inch form factor, the MC04 Series delivers 7,200 revolutions per minute (RPM) performance, enabling suitable service levels for high performance cloud-based applications and storage.

Toshiba's highest capacity enterprise cloud HDD delivers a 20 percent increase over the previous generation's 5TB capacity, enabling more efficient high-density, high-growth storage for multi-petabyte rack deployments. Furthermore, the newest addition to the MC04 Series improves ROI for scale-out storage solutions with a 20 percent increase in power efficiency (TB/W) over previous generations, enabling more cost-effective delivery of cloud storage services.

Seagate Technology, a worldwide leader in storage solutions, today announced it has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu, China's largest web services firm, in the areas of low-cost online storage, archiving and Big Data analysis.

Under the agreement, Baidu will give priority to Seagate products when considering components for all Baidu servers and storage facilities. In return Seagate will align with Baidu as a Strategic Customer and give priority to Baidu when providing enterprise storage products and relevant support, as well as maintain a dedicated engineering team for Baidu. Seagate will supply enterprise capacity and performance products as part of the relationship. The agreement also allows for joint research in new technology projects in the areas of Cold Storage, Big Data analysis and Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). Big Data analysis is the process of examining large amounts of various types of data to find useful information and patterns to assist in decision making.

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader in storage deployed for modern datacenters, today announced its innovative WD Ae line of hard drives designed for the unique operating characteristics of the emerging archive tier within web-scale datacenters. Built on a platform to achieve optimal total cost of ownership (TCO), WD Ae hard drives utilize the lowest possible power consumption and a Progressive Capacity model to enable a new tier of storage for large-scale cloud infrastructures.

"Modern datacenter customers came to us with a need for an HDD solution designed specifically for ever-expanding cold-data repositories," said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager, storage technology, WD. "Now in our third generation with over 700 petabytes deployed, WD is bringing the WD Ae drive to the broader market, representing another vital component of WD's capacity storage portfolio, which delivers features and product attributes optimized for the rapidly evolving storage market."

Dell today unveiled its most advanced and easy-to-manage portfolio of PowerEdge servers, designed to help customers worldwide address and optimize the evolving spectrum of application and workload requirements. The Dell PowerEdge 13th generation server portfolio features customer-inspired engineering built to optimize price performance for the widest range of web, enterprise and hyperscale applications, and features state-of-the-art advancements in storage, processing and memory technology coupled with industry-leading systems management capabilities.

The new Dell PowerEdge portfolio - which begins with five form-factors across blade, rack and tower servers - provides customers with choice in how they address industry trends including cloud computing, mobility, big data, and software-defined. More than 80 percent of IT decision-makers report these factors as investment priorities for the next 12 months, according to the Future Ready IT survey, recent worldwide research commissioned by Dell and Intel.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, announces that it has partnered with NaviSite to deliver Desktop as a Service (DaaS) systems for cloud-based virtual desktop environments. NaviSite's DaaS will work together with ViewSonic's VDI-based hardware to seamlessly run virtualized environments, enabling the transition to a cloud infrastructure without encumbering IT operations.

ViewSonic and NaviSite will deliver scalable, flexible off-site, cloud-hosted solutions. ViewSonic's line of award-winning VDI products will be compatible with NaviSite's DaaS for optimum performance, showing off the flexibility and manageability of a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure. The NaviSite DaaS solution offers a secure and fully managed cloud-computing foundation, leveraging its NaviCloud platform. It is engineered around usability, scalability and efficiency, allowing businesses to work around current and future technologies and growth.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing visual solution products, announces its SD-A235 Citrix XenMobile Smart Display at Citrix Synergy Conference. From its powerful NVIDIA Tegra4 processor to its professional grade 23-inch, LED IPS panel and 10-point touch screen features, the ViewSonic SD-A235 is the complete package for educational settings, health care facilities, and small/medium businesses looking for alternative desktop solutions that offer manageable locked-down smart clients for their virtual desktop environments. ViewSonic will be at Citrix Synergy Conference in booth #416 at the Anaheim Convention Center, May 6-8, 2014.

"With educational institutions, medical facilities, and corporations looking for ways to cut costs, but not wanting to sacrifice productivity, the SD-A235 will increase efficiency in any VDI setting," said Jeff Volpe, president of ViewSonic Americas. "Customers are looking for security and control to leverage their mobile and cloud-based investments, and the SD-A235 delivers this in one fully manageable and secure environment. ViewSonic is proud to offer an all-in-one technology solution that takes performance and productivity to a whole new level."

ASUS and ASUS Cloud today jointly announce the provision of 100 GB ASUS WebStorage space for one year for new ASUS Desktop and All-in-One (AiO) PC users. Customers who purchase select desktop or AiO PC models will receive special offers from ASUS WebStorage which include increased storage capacity to save, sync, and share files easily through the cloud.

"In 2013, the percentage activation rate of ASUS WebStorage for desktop and AiO users was three times higher than in 2012. People are getting used cloud storage and appreciate the added convenience and flexibility it brings to them. This is a step in the right direction. We'll continue investing resources to expand our cloud services to benefit our end users," said Mr Joe Hsieh, Corporate Vice President & General Manager of ASUS Desktop Systems.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it is now shipping the world's fastest 6 TB hard disk drive (HDD) - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4. Boasting industry-leading performance, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 is an important step forward in scale-out data infrastructures delivering supersize storage and enterprise reliability to meet the explosive growth of corporate and cloud-based data centers.

"Unstructured data growth is doubling exponentially and will propel the digital universe to reach 16 Zettabytes of data by as early as 2017. This will cause cloud service providers to look for innovative ways to store more within an existing footprint while lowering operational costs," said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. "Seagate is poised to address this challenge by offering the fastest 6 TB enterprise capacity HDD based on our proven, reliable platform meeting this never-ending demand in both private and public cloud data centers."

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in connected storage solutions, today expanded its prosumer personal cloud solutions with My Cloud EX2, a high-performance two-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. The My Cloud EX2 and My Cloud EX4 products are designed from the ground up for creative professionals and prosumers that need to reliably save, share, back up, stream and manage large amounts of digital data.

"WD is committed to providing a comprehensive portfolio of personal cloud solutions as the need for digital data storage continues to dramatically increase," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Branded Products and worldwide sales. "With the My Cloud EX series of products, customers will be thrilled with the advanced features, high-performance and reliability that only WD can provide."

Razer, the world leader in entertainment devices and software, today announced a new feature for Razer Game Booster that automatically saves game data and settings to the cloud for thousands of titles. In its beta version, Razer Game Booster's Save Game Manager will back up a user's game progress to Dropbox. Other cloud storage services will be enabled in the program's full release.

Save Game Manager is compatible for games with local save files and it supports fully automated backup services for more than 2,000 titles. The list of supported games can be continuously updated by Razer's software engineering team as new titles are released and users may manually add games, ensuring that every supported game works with the Save Game Manager.

Razer, the world leader in high-performance gaming hardware, software and systems, today announced the addition of a warranty function to Razer Synapse 2.0, allowing gamers to quickly register and monitor their warranty period in a single convenient location through Razer's cloud-based hardware configurator.

The new opt-in Warranty function allows for quick registration of Razer's Synapse 2.0-supported products, and also allows users to register other Razer gear, such as analog headsets and mouse mats. Specific to North America, Razer is also removing proof-of-purchase requirements in its product return policy, if the guarantee can be verified automatically with the serial number.

Intel Corporation unveiled innovations in HPC and announced new software tools that will help propel businesses and researchers to generate greater insights from their data and solve their most vital business and scientific challenges.

"In the last decade, the high-performance computing community has created a vision of a parallel universe where the most vexing problems of society, industry, government and research are solved through modernized applications," said Raj Hazra, Intel vice president and general manager of the Technical Computing Group. "Intel technology has helped HPC evolve from a technology reserved for an elite few to an essential and broadly available tool for discovery. The solutions we enable for ecosystem partners for the second half of this decade will drive the next level of insight from HPC. Innovations will include scale through standards, performance through application modernization, efficiency through integration and innovation through customized solutions."

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today expanded its recently introduced My Cloud family of personal cloud solutions with My Cloud EX4, a high-performance four-bay network attached storage (NAS) solution for creative professionals, prosumers, workgroups and anyone looking for a reliable way to save, share, back up, stream and manage massive amounts of digital data.

"The reception for our recently introduced My Cloud personal cloud platform was extremely positive," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "Our single drive My Cloud system is the perfect solution for users that want an easy and private way to store all of their data at home and then share, save and manage it from anywhere in the world, on any device. Expanding our My Cloud platform to a four-bay system delivers the advanced features, customization capability and capacity that many of our customers are looking for."

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA GRID technology is now available from Amazon Web Services (AWS) through its newly announced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G2 instance, delivering GPU acceleration to users running graphics-intensive applications and games in the cloud.

This expands the uses of cloud computing from storage, data processing and 2D applications to 3D, fully GPU-accelerated, interactive consumer and professional applications. With NVIDIA GRID GPUs, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies can now build cloud-based offerings with extreme graphics performance for design, visualization, media creation, games and more.

NVIDIA today announced that NVIDIA GRID technology is powering the Playcast cloud gaming service being offered to customers of French fixed and mobile operator Bouygues Telecom. The service is available on TVs for users of Bouygues Telecom's Bbox Sensation set-top box for instant gaming on more than 50 titles.

"NVIDIA and Playcast have delivered a scalable, high-performance cloud-gaming system for our broadband customers," said Franck Abihssira, head of Fixed Services and Content Division, Bouygues Telecom. "Bouygues Telecom is offering innovative gaming services that enable a great experience available to our 1.5 million subscribers."