On Wednesday afternoon, NetApp (NTAP) announced that its second-quarter profit came in more than twice that from the same period a year ago. The company raked in 27 cents per share during the quarter, compared to 13 cents per share a year ago. Excluding items, the tech firm would have pulled in 37 cents per share. Expectations called for earnings of 30 cents per share on revenue of $881.6 million. Actual revenue came in at $910 million, handily topping the consensus estimate.

NTAP's CFO, Steve Gomo, attributed the far better-than-expected earnings to improved sales of the company's main storage-area-networking. This product helps businesses build their data storage operations.

GreenBytes, a unique data storage appliance company, has just received an $8 million Series A round of investment financing. Battery Ventures completed the deal, which provides fresh resources for the Rhode Island-based energy-efficient technology company.

Founded in 2007, GreenBytes offers network attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) solutions that reduce energy consumption, providing a cost savings opportunity while also addressing corporate social responsibility considerations.

According to Fox News, scientists at International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) have found "a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs and cost far less to produce." The development was first published in last week's Science magazine and if implemented would allow for devices that could last more than the "standard" service we see now. The technology, called "racetrack memory" is currently only "exploratory", but IBM hopes to have it in devices within ten years time.

As nice as it sounds, it's hard to see manufacturers or production companies seeking to use technology that would allow for devices that "run on a single battery charge for 'weeks at a time,' and last for decades." Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s most spacious iPod has a 160 gigabyte hard drive and can store 40,000 songs. If the new technology was used it would mean more than a 10-fold increase in songs but that is still less than the current iPod's more than "32 times the amount of storage the first iPod had when it debuted in late 2001."

The new memory is reportedly also a major improvement over flash, "the most advanced type of memory for small devices", since it has no moving parts, can write data very fast, and will not "wear out" after countless uses. Stuart Parkin, the lead researcher for IBM, also hinted that "the promise of racetrack memory could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet." In ten more years maybe we can look back and think about the next step, but until then the prospect of many more small numerous portable devices is exciting and distressing.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the data storage company, has been in a very tight trading range for years. Five years after many of the large tech poster-child stocks bottomed, EMC has had a tough time sustaining a rally.

However, according to Barron's Technology Trader column (subscription required), EMC might be a beneficiary of virtualization, software applications which allow users to more cost effectively utilize their hardware. EMC's VMware is a leader in this space and is expected to show a 60% revenue gain this year, according to Sanford Bernstein.

A big driver for virtualization is the move to data centers. Companies can outsource many functions to data centers which specialize in virtualizing services.

EMC has been dead money for a while. This quarter's results should provide some insight into how VMware business is performing. If this business continues to take hold, this stock should attract investor interest again. And as if to prove the point, UBS today upgraded EMC to Buy from Neutral.