Columnists’ Corner: In this week’s installment of Storage Insider, Mario Apicella attempts to demystify serial attached SCSI (SAS), and teach even old storage folks some new tricks. SOA: In his blog Jon Udell provides a glimpse into a handful of proposed topics for Day One of the upcoming InfoWorld SOA Executive Forum, in NYC, on November 7-8. These include: IT agility, the evolving role of the repository, and developer’s view of the services infrastructure. Udell offers deeper detail and opens the floor for suggestions. Hardware: Michael Dell predicts that dual-core Xeons will outpace AMD within the next year. Of course, Dell sells Xeons but not AMD chips. The news beat: The use of open source software continues to grow in Europe; SAP raises full-year forecast on strong Q3 sales; a European Union software vendor group denies being a Microsoft puppet; and Microsoft is still working to clarify some of its technical documents. Technology Industry