Two very different press conferences/product launches happened today, and both had a very common theme: control.

What’s the difference between naughty and nice when it comes to IT companies? Microsoft and EMC would definitely not have made the nice list over the last decade, but things are changing. With their competition taking dents in the ongoing battles, Microsoft and EMC just don’t look so bad anymore.

NetApp today announced a predictable step in the transition of their corporate leadership, with Tom Georgens taking over as CEO and long-time Dan Warmenhoven planning retirement after a short stint as Executive Chairman. Today’s move follows Georgens’ promotion to President and COO in January of 2008, and is part of a remarkably smooth and clear transition of power for the enterprise storage company. NetApp founder, Dave Hitz, broke the news, chronicling the transition in his blog.

We in the storage and server fields (not to mention Apple fans) have been watching ZFS with keen interest for a while. It holds great promise as the next-generation UNIX filesystem foundation, and Joerg Moellenkamp over at c0t0d0s0.com has been covering Sun’s open-source ZFS super-filesystem for quite a while.