Disaster Warning

2:30 PM -- I was glad to see that Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) recently announced a deal with the Hawaii-based Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) to develop early warning systems for a number of countries in the region. (See Sun Intros Warning System.)

It is almost a year to the day since the tsunami wrought devastation throughout Asia. The IT industry, particularly storage vendors, has a critical role to play helping build systems that could save lives. If vendors possess the know-how to process mountains of seismic data for the oil and gas industry, then they can certainly help some of the worlds poorer nations build early warning systems to protect themselves.

IT firms were extremely generous when it came to donating funds to tsunami relief earlier this year, but their technology could go even further to reduce the impact of another disaster. (See SGI Powers WHOI.) It's a trend I hope continues to gain momentum in 2006.

— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch