IPIP Blog

Columbia West Properties Deploys OpenDNS Enterprise to protect four luxury hotels and its corporate network from inappropriate content, conserve precious bandwidth and centralize management.

SAN FRANCISCO (PRWEB) February 15, 2012

OpenDNS, the worlds largest and fastest-growing provider of Internet security and DNS services that deliver a safer, faster and more intelligent Internet experience to everyone, today announced Columbia West Properties is using OpenDNS Enterprise, the hospitality industrys preferred security solution, to proactively protect its guests, employees and corporate network from inappropriate and malicious content. Columbia West Properties operates four boutique hotels near high-traffic destinations in Seattle under the Pineapple Hospitality brand.

Prior to deploying OpenDNS Enterprise, the Columbia West Properties IT team was facing an uphill battle conserving precious bandwidth on its networks and preventing access to unsavory or malicious Internet content. Prior to using OpenDNS Enterprise, the Columbia West team was forced to spend valuable resources identifying offending sites and individually blacklisting them. Additionally, the team would have needed to individually deploy appliances and perform time-consuming maintenance at the 4 different hotel locations when updates were required.

The Columbia West Properties IT Team selected OpenDNS Enterprise because the service immediately solved a multitude of problems across their networks: Employees are prevented from stumbling across inappropriate or unsavory websites, customer data is protected from being communicated off its network via malware or botnets, bandwidth consumption is under control and IT security management is centralized. Alternative options, including appliances, software-based solutions, and firewall modules or add-ons would have only solved a portion of these issues, and come at a greater cost of time and resources.

The Columbia West Properties IT team was also searching for a solution that would help them engage in a more proactive IT security strategy. David Thomson, director of IT for Columbia West Properties explains, At our boutique properties like the HotelFive in downtown Seattle or the Maxwell Hotel in Seattles Queen Ann neighborhood, its paramount that our guests private information remain secure. OpenDNS Enterprise lets us employ measures to prevent employees from getting to sites that could download malware or botnets and intercept customer data.

Since deploying OpenDNS Enterprise, Columbia West Properties IT Team has seen considerable improved efficiency in how their IT security is managed. OpenDNS Enterprise automatically updates site categories were blocking, saving us valuable time, Thomson said. Plus, remote management makes my work so much easier. When I have filtering rules set for one property such as our University Inn hotel, I can easily copy them over to our other property, the Watertown hotel, with just the click of a button, even though I may be hours away from these hotels at the time

Thomson concluded: We have a reputation to uphold with our customers and we cannot risk letting them down because of a hole in network security. With OpenDNS Enterprise, were not exposed to such risk.

About OpenDNS

OpenDNS is the worlds leading provider of Internet security and DNS services, enabling the world to connect to the Internet with confidence on any device, anywhere, any time. OpenDNS provides millions of businesses, schools and households with a safer, faster and more intelligent Internet experience by protecting them from malicious Web threats and providing them control over how users navigate the Internet, while dramatically increasing the networks overall performance and reliability. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: www.opendns.com.

About Columbia West Properties

A family-owned and operated business, Columbia West Properties (CWP) owns, manages and develops a variety of commercial, retail, multi-family and hospitality properties in Washington state. Founded by Diane Foreman in 1988, CWP is currently managed by her daughter, Michelle Foreman Barnet, who serves as president, in conjunction with Diane and her husband Richard Foreman who serve as co-CEOs. CWPs notable properties include Bellevues Pacific Plaza; Waterworks Marina and Offices; the historic Holyoke Building,HotelFIVE and Maxwell Hotel in downtown Seattle; and the University Inn and Watertown Hotel in Seattles University District. Other projects currently in development include the Second Avenue Towers on Virginia Street in downtown Seattle (currently in planning phase). For more information, please visit www.columbiawestproperties.com.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/2/prweb9188451.htm

Enterprise 2.0 success: BASF

By Dion Hinchcliffe | February 15, 2012, 11:57am PST

Summary: Industrial giant BASF wanted to bring its employees together and drive better business performance, but needed to ensure it was heading in the right direction and that uptake would ultimately succeed. Heres the story of how they achieved rapid viral growth of their Enterprise 2.0 platform last year.

Following the companys debut of new Solid State Drives (SSDs) yesterday, California-based flash storage company SanDisk made two announcements on Wednesday pertaining to the software side of the companys solid state drive business.

First, SanDisk announced that it had acquired FlashSoft, and second that it has formed an exclusive partnership with Diskeeper Corp for SSD software solutions. Both announcements cover similar ground, but span the consumer and enterprise settings.

The partnership with Diskeeper means SanDisk will be the exclusive licensee of Diskeeper’s ExpressCache and NowOn storage optimization software products (the latter of which we are still inquiring about,) for application across client and enterprise computing and mobile markets, specifically in the burgeoning Ultrabook class of notebook computers.

NEW YORK, Feb. 15, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — The Dojo Foundation today announced the Dojo Mobile 1.7 toolkit along with visual tools for mobile user interface and mobile theme construction in Maqetta Preview 4. Developers now have a complete set of mobile tools that deliver the cross-discipline, reliability and customization benefits needed by Enterprise teams. Todays announcement represents a major milestone in delivering integrated design-to-development Cloud tooling, along with a comprehensive open source widget set for the desktop and mobile devices.

While the desktop world has standardized on HTML-based open web technologies, until now, a large percentage of mobile development teams targeting phones and tables have created different platform-specific native versions for each different device, which results in high costs for creation and maintenance.

With these announcements, along with other related advances in the industry (eg, proliferation of HTML5 capable browsers on mobile devices, improved mobile network speeds including 4G and maturing hybrid web/native tools such as PhoneGap), developers can now create high-quality mobile applications using the same cross-platform HTML5 used in desktop browsers, with all of the cost efficiencies and disciplined team development approaches needed by Enterprise teams.

The Dojo Toolkit is an industry-leading JavaScript toolkit that scales from simple, small-scale development to large-scale team development, and is used by thousands of companies around the world. The Dojo Toolkit is a comprehensive JavaScript development platform that provides key Enterprise-development benefits. The benefits include, all technologies available from a single distribution (eliminating#xA0; mix/match conflicts from different suppliers), backwards compatibility across releases, sophisticated widget framework for extending built-in widgets and creating reusable custom widgets, integrated build system for minimizing network requests and download sizes, common globalization framework, and a set of core widgets that use a common accessibility framework to meet common government accessibility requirements.

Maqetta is a Dojo Foundation open source project for visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces, desktop and mobile. Dojo Foundation makes the Maqetta application available for free use at http://maqetta.org and provides ZIP downloads for installing Maqetta on intranet servers or running locally. Maqetta is in its technology preview phase, with a 1.0 release expected later in 2012.

These new resources provide the following benefits to mobile development teams:

• With Dojo Toolkit 1.7 – Comprehensive toolkit for building cross-platform mobile applications using HTML5 (both browser-based and installed from apps stores)
• With Maqetta Preview 4 – Strong tools for integrating the design team into the mobile development process, including CSS theme tools that ease development and conformance to corporate visual styling standards

New features in Dojo Toolkit 1.7 include:

• A complete, Enterprise-ready mobile widget set. The mobile widget set provides a full set of common mobile user interface controls that emulate native device controls and support native interactivity, including touch gestures.
• A collection of mobile CSS themes that provide either device-specific, platform-native look feel for iPhone, Android and other devices, or a general cross-platform look feel, and allow for extensive customization so that Enterprise developers can modify the mobile CSS themes to match corporate mobile styling standards.
• A refactored core that is optimized for small footprint and high performance on smart phones and tablets, starting at under 4KB gzipped.
• A new JavaScript loader (AMD) engine that improves the speed of network requests, enables multiple versions of particular modules to run simultaneously and helps reduce download size.
• A revamped and simplified client-side data management engine (dojo.store) that makes it easy to create data-centric web applications and easy to bind data stores programmatically to widgets such as #xA0;data grids, trees, and menus.

Maqetta Preview 4 provides:

• Visual authoring support for Dojo 1.7s extensive mobile widget set and mobile CSS themes.
• Non-programmers and programmers can create true WYSIWYG mobile user interfaces via simple drag/drop from a widget palette into a life-size replica of a mobile device silhouette.
• Powerful mobile CSS theme editor that allow designers to use visual tools for customizing Dojo 1.7s mobile CSS themes to match corporate branding standards.
• Maqetta creates actual running HTML, CSS and JS that can be previewed on actual devices and ultimately handed off to developers to transform into a production application.

With Maqettas Preview 4 release, in addition to drag/drop creation of HTML5 mobile user interfaces without programming, Maqetta now provides a mobile CSS theme editor so that companies can customize widget and HTML styling to match corporate mobile branding standards, says Jon Ferraiolo, project lead for Dojos Maqetta open source project. With the new features in Preview 4, Maqetta now provides a critical mass of capability that allows companies to bring designers into collaborative Enterprise mobile app development.

We are excited by the promise of Maqetta for improving the speed and quality of our Enterprise development efforts for both desktop and mobile, says Roman Chanclor, Interface Design Director at Enterprise Information Management, Inc., an industry leader in business process automation.

EIM delivers Information Technology consulting, design, planning, and implementation services for organizations looking to rapidly automate enterprise business processes, streamline the management of complex case environments, and turn information into insight. Maqetta allows our designers to create WYSIWYG user interface prototypes for both desktop and mobile without programming.#xA0; Maqetta authors its prototypes using the same HTML5, JavaScript and CSS that our developers use, making it easy to transition from design to development, Chanclor added.

With Dojo, were very excited to offer a unified toolkit that uses the same, highly efficient underlying code base for web and mobile applications, said Dylan Schiemann, chairman of the Dojo Foundation.#xA0; #xA0;And with Maqetta and Dojo 1.7, its now possible for non-programmers to get started creating application user interfaces with an open-source, web-based drag and drop tool that outputs elegant source code.

For more information: http://dojofoundation.org

Contact: Dylan Schiemann, dylan@dojotoolkit.org, 650.968.8787 x112

SOURCE The Dojo Foundation

Three businesses with headquarters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have been named to the list of 2011 Americas Top Corporations for Womens Business Enterprise.

Dallas-based ATamp;T Inc.

ATT Inc.
Latest from The Business Journals
Kansas City ranks low in rating of small business attitudes about wireless technologyIts a phone…its a tablet….its the Samsung Galaxy NoteNashville entrepreneurs mean business. Again.

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, Irving-based Exxon Mobil Corp.

Exxon Mobil Corp.
Latest from The Business Journals
Chevron plans billion expansion in KazakhstanApple shares top 0, next stop 0B market cap?Green Energy Oilfield Services buys 60 Peterbilt LNG trucks

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and Energy Future Holdings

Energy Future Holdings
Latest from The Business Journals
Energy Future Holdings reports .9 billion loss in 2011ERCOT to allow Luminant to shut down 2 coal-fired unitsTXU sees 6% dip in customers

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of Dallas made the list announced Wednesday by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council

Womens Business Enterprise National Council
Latest from The Business Journals
Target named a top supporter of female entrepreneursCincinnati Urban League to offer WBE certification Bank of America named among top companies for womens businesses

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.

The 2011 list honoring 29 companies is the 13th annual listing of businesses recognized for their programs that level the playing field for womens business enterprise, the council said in a release.

“Our Top Corporations know that women’s businesses drive innovation and competitiveness in today’s marketplace. That’s why they are deeply committed to strategic business development programs that span their organizations and achieve measurable results,” said Pamela Prince-Eason, president and CEO of WBENC.

Lance Murray can be reached at 214-706-7106

HOUSTON, Feb 15, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
The 2011 tax packages, including Schedule K-1, for former unitholders of
Duncan Energy Partners L.P. are now available online and may be accessed
through the Enterprise website
www.enterpriseproducts.com .
The partnership expects to complete mailing of the 2011 Duncan Energy
Partners tax packages by Wednesday, February 22, 2012. For additional
information, unitholders may call the K-1 Tax Package Support toll free
at (866) 709-8273 weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT.

The 2011 tax packages, including the Schedule K-1 for Enterprise
Products Partners L.P.

/quotes/zigman/229258/quotes/nls/epd EPD
+0.50%

are expected to be available online by
Noon CT on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. Enterprise expects to complete
mailing of the 2011 tax packages to unitholders of EPD by Wednesday,
March 28, 2012. For additional information, Enterprise unitholders may
call K-1 Tax Package Support toll free at (800) 599-9985 weekdays
between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. is one of the largest publicly traded
partnerships and a leading North American provider of midstream energy
services to producers and consumers of natural gas, NGLs, crude oil,
refined products and petrochemicals. The partnership’s assets include
approximately: 50,600 miles of onshore and offshore pipelines; 190
million barrels of storage capacity for NGLs, petrochemical, refined
products and crude oil; and 14 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage
capacity. Services include: natural gas gathering, treating, processing,
transportation and storage; NGL transportation, fractionation, storage,
and import and export terminaling; offshore production platform
services; crude oil and refined products transportation, storage and
terminaling; petrochemical transportation and storage; and a marine
transportation business that operates primarily on the United States
inland and Intracoastal Waterway systems and in the Gulf of Mexico.

SOURCE: Enterprise Products Partners L.P.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P.
Randy Burkhalter, 713-381-6812 or 866-230-0745
Investor Relations
or
Rick Rainey, 713-381-3635
Media Relations

Copyright Business Wire 2012

/quotes/zigman/229258/quotes/nls/epd

Add EPD to portfolio

EPD

Enterprise Products Partners L.P.

$
52.29

+0.26
+0.50%

Volume: 1.53M
Feb. 17, 2012 4:00p

COLUMBIA, MD, Feb 06, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
Empowering its workforce with a corporate mobile strategy, HOLLY
HUNT, a premier high-end interior furnishing design and distribution
company, implemented BoxTone’s Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)
solution to secure, manage, and support its enterprise-connected
fleet of mobile devices and apps. By deploying the BoxTone EMM
platform company-wide, HOLLY HUNT brought a “Bring Your Own Device”
(BYOD) strategy to employees; enabling them to securely and reliably
access to the corporate network from their personal iPhone, iPad,
Android or BlackBerry mobile devices, as well as corporate-owned
iPads and tablets that were currently being used by the warehouse and
sales force.

When BlackBerry smartphones were introduced to the market, HOLLY HUNT
issued corporate-owned devices to employees to promote productivity.
More recently and with the advancement of mobile technologies, HOLLY
HUNT employees started requesting the right to bring and use their
own iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices and tablets and connect them
to the corporate network.

“Our employees’ requests for new enterprise-connected mobile devices
sparked our interest to look at how we could implement a BYOD program
into our corporate structure, while leveraging new mobile devices and
their enterprise apps to bring additional advantages to our Company,”
said Neil Goodrich, director of Business Analytics and Technology at
HOLLY HUNT. “We required a mobility management platform that would go
beyond mobile device management; one that could support the full
mobile device lifecycle while managing and securing mobile apps.
BoxTone’s Enterprise Mobility Management solution proved to be the
ideal offering.”

Recommended by Verizon Wireless, BoxTone’s EMM platform was chosen
because of simplicity of pricing, ease of deployment in HOLLY HUNT’s
virtualized environment, and the intuitive nature of the software.
The BoxTone EMM platform has also helped HOLLY HUNT more efficiently
manage a human resources employee stipend program for mobile devices,
contributing to a five percent reduction in total telecom costs for
the Company. In addition, BoxTone’s direct integration into HOLLY
HUNT’s Active Directory IT policies and other core IT systems ensured
that IT could consistently and remotely enforce policies on all BYOD
and corporate devices.

“Our mission at BoxTone is to drive mobile innovation within
companies like HOLLY HUNT,” said Brian Reed, Chief Product Officer at
BoxTone. “We want them to see mobility as a tool that successfully
enhances their business. Leveraging BoxTone’s experience, technology
and industry best-practices, HOLLY HUNT is able to better serve their
growing network of high-end interior designer customers, mobilizing
their business safely, reliably and efficiently.”

BoxTone is enabling hundreds of retailers, healthcare institutions,
energy and financial services companies, and government agencies
worldwide to mobilize safely, reliably and efficiently. Through its
best-practice approach, BoxTone’s automated EMM solution empowers
enterprise IT and Managed Services Providers (MSPs) to centrally
manage the full mobile lifecycle (secure, deploy, monitor, enforce
compliance, change update, support, retire) across all mobile users,
devices, tablets and apps. BoxTone simplifies mobile service delivery
in a complex world.

About BoxTone
BoxTone is the innovator of automated Enterprise
Mobility Management (EMM). With millions of devices under management,
BoxTone’s automated EMM platform is trusted by more of the world’s
leading enterprises, Managed Services Providers and government
agencies than any other — including 41 of the Fortune(R) 100 and 8
of the Top 10 MSPs — to ensure maximum mobile performance and
security at the lowest cost and risk. Only BoxTone’s single unified
mobile management platform powered by patented real-time automation
technology addresses the entire mobile lifecycle: mobile device
management, application management, support management and operations
management. And only BoxTone delivers real-time centralized control
of all mobile smartphones and tablets including iPhone and iPad,
Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, as well as the
enterprise apps that run on them. Learn more at
www.boxtone.com , or
call +1 410.910.3344.

BoxTone and the BoxTone logo are trademarks of BoxTone. All other
product or company names mentioned are used for identification
purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contacts:
Joel Weinshank
Senior Director, Marketing at BoxTone
410-910-3360
Email Contact

Patrick Dixon
Finn Partners for BoxTone
212-593-6441
Email Contact

SOURCE: BoxTone

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=D139E7B7F2361D59

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=07740A2388B901AC

Copyright 2012 Marketwire, Inc., All rights reserved.

Last year, lawmakers wanted to teach kids that the US is a compound constitutional republic.

This year, at least one lawmaker wants them to learn more about the virtues of the free enterprise system.

Rep. Keith Grover, R-Provo, is running a bill, HB370, that would require students to take a one-semester class on the free enterprise system before graduating from high school. According to the bill, areas of instruction would include private property ownership; competition and regulation; profit and loss; and the impact of government spending, regulation, taxation, and monetary and trade policies on economic growth, entrepreneurship, productivity and technological innovation, among other things.

According to the bill, a flourishing economy arises from private sector initiative and entrepreneurship working in a free market protected by the rule of law and nurtured by limited government that guarantees private ownership rights, economic liberty and equality of opportunity.

Grover said he believes the class would help encourage future entrepreneurs and teach kids valuable lessons in the wake of this recession. He said the bill is a chance to look at what we’re doing and see if that’s the best way to advance our free market economy and good ideas, and getting kids the knowledge that they need to be successful in a very treacherous financial world.

Grover also said he’s open to potentially changing the bill so the course would not be required.

When asked about the idea Wednesday, Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, said she’s not opposed to teaching kids about free enterprise, but believes the place for that is in financial literacy class, which is already a requirement of graduation.

I’m not opposed to the idea but every time we mandate a course … that means something has to be left out, Moss said.

A school assistant principal, Grover said he knows some of the topics within his bill are covered in financial literacy classes, but would like to make sure they’re priorities within the curriculum. He said he’s also open to working with education leaders to see if there’s a way to better emphasize those concepts within existing courses.

The text of the bill was released this week. A hearing has not yet been scheduled for HB370.

lschencker@sltrib.com

MINNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV),
the revenue growth experts in global cloud commerce, announced it has
signed agreements with four companies to power their global online
stores through its Digital River^® Commerce Express^(TM)
solution. Digital River is helping these companies sell and market their
digital and physical products in online markets with sophisticated,
enterprise-level tools that they have the power to self-manage.

The available testing and promotional tools have been
especially key to the success of our online store. These features have
allowed us to optimize our site and as a result we have tripled the
demand for our product and exceeded our sales expectations.

“What sets Commerce Express apart is that it’s a self-managed commerce
solution running on a global, enterprise-level system known for
scalability, breadth and flexibility,” said Joel Ronning, Digital
River’s CEO. “This technology combination offers companies an important
advantage. Commerce Express puts companies in full control of the
advanced commerce tools they need to run their online stores today. At
the same time, it gives them the global scalability and seamless upgrade
path they need to support higher-volume traffic and business growth in
the future.”

Among the new clients using Commerce Express, are:

• Cloud
  Engines: A cloud storage service provider that supports a
  mobile lifestyle and creator of Pogoplug – a device that enables users
  to store, share and stream personal content.
• Futuremark:
  A leading developer of original games for Windows^® and
  Android^(TM) tablets as well as popular performance
  benchmarking software and services that allow users to measure and
  improve their PCs for optimal performance.
• Her
  Interactive: A premier developer and publisher of mystery
  adventure games geared for female gamers.
• Tely
  Labs: The developer of telyHD, an Android-based
  high-definition (HD) video calling device that enables consumers to
  connect face-to-face with family and friends through their TV using
  Skype.

“Commerce Express has empowered us to streamline our sales process, be
more responsive to market demands and provided us the added assurance
that our commerce investment will keep pace with our aggressive growth
objectives,” said Lisa Contoyannis, vice president of e-commerce for
Pogoplug. “The available testing and promotional tools have been
especially key to the success of our online store. These features have
allowed us to optimize our site and as a result we have tripled the
demand for our product and exceeded our sales expectations.”

Digital River’s Commerce Express solution is built on the backbone of
its Global Commerce^(TM) enterprise system, which supports
tens of thousands of online businesses around the world. The technology
provides fully customizable checkout features, extensive merchandising
options, high-end marketing tools, cloud-based billing methods and
global capabilities that are all optimized to drive online revenue.
Commerce Express users also have access to a dedicated support team
focused on providing initial site setup and system training as well as
help troubleshooting common inquires.

About Digital River, Inc.

Digital River, Inc., the revenue growth experts in global cloud
commerce, builds and manages online businesses for software and game
publishers, consumer electronics manufacturers, distributors, online
retailers and affiliates. Its multi-channel commerce solution, which
supports both direct and indirect sales, is designed to help companies
of all sizes maximize online revenues as well as reduce the costs and
risks of running a global commerce operation. The company’s
comprehensive platform offers site development and hosting, order
management, fraud management, export controls, tax management, physical
and digital product fulfillment, multi-lingual customer service,
advanced reporting and strategic marketing services.

Founded in 1994, Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with
offices across the US, Asia, Europe and South America. For more
details about Digital River, visit the corporate
website, follow the company on Twitter
or call +1 952-253-1234.

Forward-Looking Statement

In addition to the historical information contained herein, this
press release contains forward-looking statements, such as statements
containing the words, “will,” “plans,” “intends,” “expects,” and similar
words. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results,
performance or achievements of Digital River, or industry results, to
differ materially from those expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: Digital
River’s operating history and variability of operating results;
competition in the electronic commerce market; the ability of Digital
River to support e-commerce operations of a self-managed commerce
solution; the market’s acceptance of such offerings; and other risk
factors referenced in Digital River’s public filings with the Securities
and Exchange Commission.

Digital River is a registered trademark of Digital River, Inc. All
other trademarks and registered trademarks are trademarks of their
respective owners.

Twitter Tags: #ecommerce, @DigitalRiverInc

Tweet This: Digital River helps drive sales with its self-managed
enterprise #ecommerce solution – Commerce Express

–>

The Intel SSD 520 is targeted at the client user that, but with the backing of the Intel brand and the quality of engineering that went into this SSD, its definitely going to creep into the enterprise as well. As seen in our client Intel SSD 520 review, the SandForce-based SSD drives great performance, while offering co-developed custom firmware and Intels best NAND. Within the enterprise, the SSD 520 will find its way not just into workstations and other PC duty, but into servers and other environments where speedy storage in largely read-oriented scenarios can really shine.

One of the most obvious concerns in the enterprise, especially when letting a MLC SSD work its way into the ecosystem, is reliability. Theres a certain willingness in some cases to trade off endurance from an eMLC or SLC-SSD in exchange for a lower-priced SSD, but the drive still needs to be stable. To that end, as discussed in detail in the client SSD 520 review, Intel has done over a years worth of validation on the hardware, including the SandForce processor. Intel has also run the 520 through over 5,000 unique tests in the validation process and verified enterprise compatibility in over 150 host systems.

The enterprise user doesnt have to give up all the endurance benefit of traditional eMLC and SLC enterprise SSDs with the 520 though. The SSD 520 can be over provisioned, to both provide increased endurance (TBW) and significantly improved performance. Over-provisioning is just a fancy term for reducing the amount of available storage space for the system, reserving more NAND for the controller to perform background maintence. You give the controller enough reserved NAND to handle garbage collection processes during constant activity without slowing things down as much, which can significantly improve performance and boost the lifespan of the drive. The downside though is when using increased OP is a linear reduction in drive capacity, therefore enterprise users need to carefully balance price, performance, and longevity with their specific workloads and requirements.

When StorageReview evaluates SSDs from an enterprise perspective, the focus is entirely on steady state performance, or how the drive will perform when hammered at with a specific workload 24/7. With the Intel SSD 520, we benchmarked performance in steady-state with stock overprovisioning as well as 20% over-provisioning. At the 20% OP state, the 240GB Intel SSD 520 turns into a 192GB SSD. To level the playing field, we over-provisioned each primary drive we tested in this review, including the Intel SSD 520, OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS as well as the enterprise-targeted eMLC-based Intel SSD 710.

Enterprise Synthetic Benchmarks

Flash media for the enterprise needs to be tested in a different manner than standard platter drives and even client-based SSDs. Flash performance changes the longer you write to a drive and speeds taper down until the drive hits its steady state speed. In an enterprise setting, initial burst is hardly relevant if after one hour of use the drive will never see that speed again. This is where steady state benchmarking comes in, showing how the drive performs when under a 24/7 load. For this reason, all of the following benchmarks were pre-conditioned and recorded in a steady-state mode.

We used our StorageReview Enterprise Testing Environment to benchmark the SSD 520; accurately representing its capabilities in an enterprise environment. The enterprise testing platform is based around a Lenovo ThinkServer RD240, equipped with dual Intel Xeon X5650 processors, running Windows Server 2008 R2. For single-drive benchmarks we connect each SSD through an LSI SAS 9211-8i HBA to measure performance without any influence of caching. All IOMeter figures are represented as binary figures for MB/s speeds.

We dive straight into our mixed-workload tests to compare the Intel SSD 520 and OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS against the Intel SSD 320, SSD 510, and SSD 710 in a series of server workloads with a static queue depth of 32. All tests are performed in steady-state. Each of our server profile tests has a strong preference towards read activity, ranging from 67% read with our database profile to 100% read in our web server profile.

The first is our database profile, with a 67% read and 33% write workload mix primarily centered on 8K transfer sizes.

Looking at stock performance in our Database profile, the Intel SSD 520 averaged 3,094 IOPS in steady-state versus 3,211 from the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS. Out of each of these drives in stock configuration the eMLC-based Intel SSD 710 gave the highest score of 3,461 IOPS.

As we compare the Intel SSD 520, SSD 710, and OCZ V3 MI with 20% over-provisioning, we start to really see how dramatic an effect reserving more NAND for the SSD can have. The Intel SSD 520 increased its average speed from 3,094 to 11,040 IOPS, the SSD 710 went from 3,461 to 5960 IOPS, and the OCZ Vertex 3 MI went from 3,211 to 10,383 IOPS.

The next profile looks at a file server, with 80% read and 20% write workload spread out over multiple transfer sizes ranging from 512-byte to 64KB.

In our File Server profile, the Toggle NAND inside the OCZ Vertex 3 MI showed a clear strength, measuring the highest out of the drives in stock configuration with a speed of 8,163 IOPS compared to 4,550 IOPS from the Intel SSD 520.

Comparing the 20% over-provisioning results, the Intel SSD 520 ramped from 4,550 to 12,941 IOPS, the SSD 710 improved from 3,837 to 5,399 IOPS, and the OCZ Vertex 3 MI went from 8,163 to 13,470 IOPS.

Our web server profile is read-only with a spread of transfer sizes from 512-byte to 512KB.

In our Webserver profile the Intel SSD 520 measured 17,095 IOPS in stock configuration compared to 18,294 IOPS from the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS. With exceptionally strong read-performance from the SandForce SF-2200 processor, these drives offered a clear advantage over the previous generation Intel SSD 510 as well as the SATA 3.0Gb/s Intel SSD 320 and SSD 710.

Out of all of our server profiles, the Webserver is unique in that it is 100% read-only. This means that over-provisioning for improved write speeds in this scenario actually hurts read performance by restricting the amount of available NAND for the processor to work with on the faster SSDs. In this case the 20% over-provisioned Intel SSD 510 dropped from 17,095 to 16,955 IOPS, the Vertex 3 MI dropped from 18,294 to 18,065 IOPS. The Intel SSD 710 stayed relatively flat, changing from 12,878 to 12,885 IOPS.

The last profile looks at a workstation, with a 20% write and 80% read mixture using 8K transfers.

In our final mixed-workload test covering Workstation performance, we measured an average speed of 5,563 IOPS from the Intel SSD 520 in stock configuration. This compared to 6,628 IOPS from the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, 4,960 IOPS from the Intel SSD 710, and 3,553 IOPS from the prior-generation Intel SSD 510.

With 20% over-provisioning the Intel SSD 520 picked up speed from 5,563 to 16,255 IOPS whereas the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS went from 6,628 to 16,258 IOPS. The Intel SSD 710 improved from 4,960 to 7,697 IOPS.

Conclusion

The Intel SSD 520 offers very good steady state performance, offering near parity with the Toggle NAND-based Vertex 3 Max IOPS throughout and generally leading Intels SSD 320 and SSD 710 offerings. The strength of the SandForce SF-2200 processor makes sense in many enterprise conditions, given the SATA 6.0Gb/s saturating read speeds and strong write speeds when the SSD has enough reserved space for background activity with over-provisioning. This can be clearly seen in our benchmarks, where performance substantially improves over stock-configuration.

While not compared directly in this review, the Intel SSD 520 with 20% over-provisioning starts to compete at the performance level of some of the industry-leading eMLC and SLC-based enterprise SSDs on the market. The reason we dont compare these drives head to head is the endurance of MLC compared to eMLC or SLC NAND is vastly different. What this means is that under extremely write-heavy conditions, an SSD equipped with MLC NAND would be exhausted rapidly, when compared to an enterprise-grade SSD. Under the right conditions though, with a light to medium workload, an MLC SSD makes sense for enterprise conditions, offering more impressive TCO than eMLC or SLC alternatives.

Pros

• Very strong performance with read-heavy enterprise workloads
• 20% over provisioning adds substantial performance in all profiles with write activity
• Intel quality and reliability testing brings the SSD 520 into the realm of light-duty enterprise SSDs with obvious TCO benefits

Cons

• Still cant compete at the endurance levels of eMLC or SLC-based SSDs

Bottom Line

The Intel SSD 520 is industry-leading fast and offers the reliability enterprises require for both workstation and light enterprise SSD use. With over provisioning users can tweak the 520 for even better performance and endurance. While not living up to eMLC and SLC SSD endurance, the cost savings are meaningful, making the SSD 520 an interesting alternative where enterprise-specific SSDs are overkill.

Related Intel SSD 520 Content

Intel SSD 520 Client Review
Intel SSD 520 RAID Review

Intel SSD 520 at Amazon.com

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