AMD Demonstrates World's First Native Quad-Core X86 Server Processor

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today demonstrated the industry’s first native quad-core x86 server processor, achieving four x86 processing cores on a single die of silicon. At the annual AMD Industry Analyst Forum, a server powered by four upcoming Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors (codenamed Barcelona), manufactured on 65nm silicon-on-insulator process technology, was shown utilizing all 16 cores. By delivering a consistent thermal envelope while adding two more processing cores, along with micro-architectural enhancements, AMD expects to significantly advance the performance-per-watt capabilities* of AMD Opteron processors.

“AMD is guided by an overarching strategy to reduce datacenter complexity and to deliver performance increases without forcing customers to endure disruptive platform transitions,” said Randy Allen, corporate vice president, Server and Workstation Division, AMD. “We discussed quad-core requirements with our customers and their end users, and determined that, as we did with the introduction of dual-core x86 processors in 2005, only a native quad-core x86 server processor would excel in the broad set of dimensions that matter to our customers. With the introduction of native quad-core x86 processors in the second quarter of 2007, AMD plans to again deliver exceptional technology based on the same customer-centric design principles that steered the development of our award-winning AMD dual-core server, workstation, desktop and mobile processors.”

Upgradeability from dual- to quad-core processors is expected to be as straightforward as it was from single- to dual-core with AMD, with unchanged thermal and electrical envelopes. The demonstration today was an example of this. The reference server platform was seamlessly upgraded to quad-core by replacing the server’s existing DDR2-based AMD Opteron processors with the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors and updating the BIOS.

The upcoming AMD Opteron processors are based on AMD’s innovative Direct Connect Architecture, which reduces bottlenecks found in legacy front-side bus x86architectures and includes AMD’s proven Integrated Memory Controller. These processors are designed to enhance I/O throughput and CPU-to-CPU communication, and to deliver increased performance with low power consumption and low memory latency.

As the next innovation on AMD’s consistent roadmap, native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors continue AMD’s tradition of reducing the total cost of ownership for the enterprise. Current DDR2-based AMD Opteron processor-based platforms should seamlessly upgrade to native quad-core AMD processors without compromising performance, power or heat – helping to meet the changing and escalating demands of the enterprise customer.

Native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors are also planned to feature enhanced AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V) technology with nested page tables, delivering world-class performance and advanced leadership in x86 virtualization, as well as energy-efficient DDR2 memory support.

“IT managers require platforms that can help them run their mission-critical business applications reliably and with less infrastructure, power and space,” said Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of IDC’s Enterprise Computing. “Because of AMD’s approach to design its multi-core processors from the ground up, AMD has set a new standard for multi-core computing in the enterprise.”

Demonstration Platform
AMD quad-core technology was demonstrated on a reference server platform running 64-bit Windows® Server 2003. The four-processor server was powered by native Quad-Core AMD Opteron 8000 Series processors.

Online Demonstration
To access a videotaped discussion and demonstration of this technology, go to http://www.amd.com/quadcoredemo

Availability
AMD expects to begin shipping native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors that incorporate four processor cores on a single die of silicon to customers in mid-2007. The first AMD quad-core processor line-up introduced will be for the two- to eight-socket server and workstation market.

About the AMD Opteron™ Processor
Today, more than 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 60 percent of the top 500 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD Opteron™ processor-based systems. Single- and Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors deliver exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.

INTC: Intel Board Elects William Holt Senior Vice President

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has promoted William M. Holt to serve as senior vice president, and also elected Sohail U. Ahmed, Stacy J. Smith and Richard G.A. Taylor as corporate officers.

“These four individuals who’ve been elected by the board of directors are key to Intel’s success,” said Paul S. Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “They have demonstrated consistent excellence in their areas of expertise and will be instrumental to continuing Intel’s leadership well into the future.”

Holt, 54, is senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group. In this role, he jointly oversees all technology development and manufacturing activities across the company. Holt joined Intel in 1974 and was named a corporate vice president in 2003.

Ahmed, 47, is vice president and director of logic technology development in the Technology and Manufacturing Group. He is responsible for the development and deployment of next-generation silicon logic technologies that will produce future Intel microprocessors. Ahmed joined Intel in 1984.

Smith, 44, is vice president and assistant chief financial officer in the Finance and Enterprise Services organization. As assistant CFO, Smith is responsible for managing Intel’s finance, treasury and internal audit functions. He began his Intel career in 1988 and has held positions in finance, sales and marketing and information technology.

Taylor, 52, is vice president and director of Human Resources in the Finance and Enterprise Services organization where he is responsible for overseeing the company’s HR policies and programs. Taylor joined the company in 1986 and has held a number of finance and HR positions during his tenure.

IBM Tivoli Automated Software Installation Technology Speeds Deployment of Microsoft Windows Vista

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new provisioning software that will help accelerate the deployment time for Microsoft Windows Vista customers. The new IBM software reduces the time it takes to manually deploy or upgrade a computer, including an operating system deployment, to less than a minute.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, based on technology from IBM's acquisition of Rembo, can help organizations automatically install or upgrade operating systems on thousands of servers, laptops and desktop computers simultaneously, eliminating the need for IT specialists to spend days or weeks installing software manually on each physical or virtualized computer.

Installing and configuring an operating system on a single computer can take more than an hour. Installing thousands of systems spread across a globalized IT environment can quickly cause labor costs to spiral out of control. Instead of physically installing the operating system with installation disks at every location, IBM customers can install operating systems from a centralized "dashboard" in a matter of minutes.

"Installing new operating systems is not something organizations do every day, or even every year, so their processes for doing so are likely outdated or nonexistent," said Bob Madey, vice president of strategy, IBM Tivoli Software. "With Tivoli Provisioning Manager, clients can dramatically reduce the time and complexity of installing nearly any operating system, including Windows Vista and Linux."

A company with geographically-dispersed employees can use Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment to conduct a mass installation onto thousands of laptops or desktops, customize the settings for each and ship them to the appropriate locations -- with no involvement required from the end user. The technology can also automatically install the initial set of fixes and patches for the operating system.

The software also includes a Universal Image feature that helps IT organizations create a single, universal image they can deploy on multiple machine types and vendor systems. This feature minimizes the number and complexity of images an organization needs to manage during their Windows Vista deployment. Universal Image lets IT departments modify images on the fly to inject the right information for a specific end user target. For example, an organization may want to deploy Windows Vista to a Dell PC, which requires the right drivers for Dell hardware.

"Windows Vista empowers businesses to work and connect more efficiently and will help drive business success," said Brad Goldberg, general manager for Windows Client Product Management Group at Microsoft Corp. "By working closely with partners like IBM we are helping to provide our mutual customers with a high quality product that improves user experiences. IBM's Tivoli Provisioning Manager complements Windows Vista and aligns with Microsoft's Business Desktop Deployment best practices by providing provisioning capabilities for clients seeking to accelerate their deployment time."

Since adding Rembo technology to its Tivoli software portfolio, customers, including the University of South Australia and Groupe Mutuel, have signed on with IBM for help with the initial provisioning of operating systems, software, and patches.

Other IBM middleware will support Windows Vista in February 2007.

HPQ: HP Introduces Industry’s First Blade Workstation

HP today introduced the industry’s first blade workstation solution which combines the benefits and security of a centralized data center with workstation-class performance.

Based on HP BladeSystem infrastructure, the HP ProLiant Blade Workstation Solution gives users the ability to quickly and seamlessly access workstation compute power from anywhere in the world using thin client devices or Microsoft Windows®-based workstations, PCs and notebooks. This type of solution is ideal for customers in the financial trading, public sector, and manufacturing industries.

London-based Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets recently customized its 255-postion trading floor with 280 HP ProLiant xw25p Blade Workstations. The devices are used by traders in the foreign exchange, derivatives, and global commodities markets, as well as by sales traders in the derivatives and interest rate trading markets.

“We were looking for something that was going to give a market edge to our traders, and for us, the HP Blade Workstation delivered on that,” said Colin Everett, head of IT strategy and infrastructure, Financial Markets, Lloyds TSB. “Having invested substantially in new premises and recruitment within our expanding Corporate Markets division, we needed to ensure our technology and customer delivery was state of the art. We believe the HP blade workstations give us this edge and will translate into better client services – which can only help boost the bottom line.”

Specific workstation features include fully certified and supported HP Remote Graphics software, real-time streaming video, 3D graphics, and multiple display support. The new solution also enables new business workflow models.

“We’re on the cusp of a major change in the way we build, maintain and adapt IT for business, and the HP Blade Workstation Solution is at the forefront of that change,” said Jim Zafarana, vice president, worldwide marketing, Workstations, HP. “The new BladeSystem solution delivers the security, reliability and manageability of a data center infrastructure with high-quality workstation performance.”

Additional benefits of the solution include significant cost savings in move/add/change (MAC) costs, system maintenance, power and cooling, and remote site operation, as well as improved data security, accessibility, work environment, disaster recovery support, and system uptime and availability.

The HP Blade Workstation Solution is available now in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More information is available at www.hp.com/go/workstations

HPQ: HP Offers Enterprise Customers Integrated Products and Support for Upcoming Microsoft Launch

HP today announced a broad portfolio of “Microsoft-Ready” products, services and solutions to help ensure customers experience a seamless transition to Windows Vista™, the 2007 Microsoft® Office system and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

HP will support the latest Microsoft products through interoperability with its enterprise hardware and software offerings – including HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem servers, HP StorageWorks products and HP Software – to improve access to information and tools so customers can more effectively collaborate and be more productive.

Additionally, nearly all HP business notebook, desktop and workstation PCs are available in Windows Vista Premium Ready configurations. In fact, HP was the first computer manufacturer in the industry to receive a Windows Vista Premium logo, for the HP xw9400 Workstation. More than 450 HP imaging and printing products are Windows Vista Ready.

As worldwide prime integrator for Microsoft products and technologies, HP Services will offer planning, design, implementation and support of the new Microsoft technologies and has the ability to integrate them into heterogeneous IT environments.

HP Services’ education team, a worldwide Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, will offer customized training to prepare businesses for the launch of Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Services include traditional classroom or online training that enables businesses to stay up to date while minimizing the time away from core business activities.

“HP has worked extensively with Microsoft to develop complementary products and services across our portfolio that help customers realize the full value of the latest Microsoft offerings,” said David Booth, senior vice president and U.S. country manager, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “With HP and Microsoft technologies, customers can create a more agile, adaptive and successful business.”

To ensure HP business customers receive the best experience from the latest technology advancements from Microsoft, the companies created the Frontline Partnership, which spans hardware, software and services.

“As we launch Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, we recognize HP as a key global partner who our customers can depend on,” said Mike Sievert, vice president, Windows marketing Group, Microsoft Corp. “Together, Microsoft and HP are providing customers high quality products and an unprecedented opportunity to build their People-Ready Business, leveraging their organizations’ greatest asset – their people.”

Improved enterprise data security, access and efficiency

HP engineers have worked intensely to ensure enterprise customers get the most from the built-in capabilities of Windows Vista, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 -- from the protection they demand, to anywhere access capabilities their employees need, to the operational efficiency required by IT administrators.

HP’s enterprise management software will support both the Windows Vista and Exchange Server 2007 environments. As a large number of enterprises upgrade to Windows Vista, HP Software smart plug-ins (SPIs) – including the Exchange Server 2007 SPI – will ensure seamless interoperability with the new platforms.

HP StorageWorks products will provide full support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, while HP ProLiant servers with Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Edition support 64-bit versions of both Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. In addition, HP BladeSystem c-Class solutions offer scalable performance, as well as a high degree of operational and management efficiencies for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

HP’s early installation of beta releases for both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provided an opportunity for preliminary performance and scalability testing. HP has deployed both applications in a pilot phase and plans to upgrade to each next year as part of its own IT transformation and data center consolidation.

ActiveAnswers, where HP shares online its experience and best practices for planning, development and operation of solutions based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, provides up-to-date technical information, system configurators as well as storage and performance tools. New whitepapers focusing on HP’s best practices for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are expected to be available in January 2007.

In addition, new HP End-User Workplace Messaging & Collaboration Solutions for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provide competitively priced alternatives to building, staffing and managing an infrastructure in-house. HP works with customers to design and deliver the solutions that will help control costs via per-seat pricing and achieve higher levels of performance.

Windows Vista simplifies device deployment, maintenance; Improves security, efficiency

HP engineers have devoted more than 153,000 cumulative hours over the past five years working with Microsoft to ensure that its IT infrastructure products smoothly and simply support and integrate the new Windows Vista operating system into enterprise IT environments.

As the first PC manufacturer to deliver TPM 1.2 embedded security in May 2005, HP desktop PCs were used extensively in the validation of BitLocker, helping to ensure HP business systems deliver a secure experience for Windows Vista enterprise customers. In addition, HP mobility customers can get more done and stay better connected with a variety of advanced Windows Vista networking and mobility features, such as HP Mobile Data Protection 3D and HP Wireless Assistant, that offer improved wireless access management and improved data protection.

To help business customers deploy Windows Vista and to help protect existing technology investments, HP is also providing customers with free or low-cost Windows Vista and 2007 Office upgrades. Additionally, software drivers and explanatory white papers are expected to be available online starting in December for select models.

For example, the HP Universal Print Driver, a single, intelligent print driver that eliminates the need to perform individual driver installations, can help businesses virtually eliminate the need for testing, qualifying and distributing hundreds of different printer drivers when they migrate to Windows Vista.(1)

In fact, many of the core printing architectures native to Microsoft operating systems were developed through a strong collaboration between HP and Microsoft. For instance, HP provided expertise in the development of Microsoft’s Unidrive printing architecture and provided input on the new XPS document format.

Finally, new HP End-User Workplace Desktop Solutions for Windows Vista can help improve security, connectivity and manageability of an end-user computing environment to deliver the full value of a Windows Vista solution. These services help clients transition to Windows Vista by evaluating business requirements and recommending an overall strategy for upgrading, deploying and managing a standardized, highly secure Windows Vista environment.

More information about HP’s support for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for business customers is available at www.hp.com/microsoft


(1) HP’s Windows Vista enabled Universal Print Driver is expected to be available in early 2007. Visit www.hp.com/go/windowsvista for the most recent Windows Vista drivers and downloads. HP Universal Print Driver is available as a free download from www.hp.com/go/universalprintdriver or www.hp.com/go/upd.

ADSK: Autodesk Unlocks Design Data for Windows Vista and XPS Users

Autodesk, Inc., announced a collaboration with Microsoft Corp. to seamlessly integrate DWF technology with Windows Vista using the XML Paper Specification (XPS). This initiative will provide users with the ability to view and manage DWF detail-rich design information without requiring additional downloads of plug-ins or special viewing software. The result of the two companies' expanded strategic alliance will simplify and extend project teams' collaboration for greater efficiency and productivity.

DWF files published to the XPS specification can be automatically opened and viewed directly in Windows Vista using the XPS Viewer. Project team members can use Microsoft Corp.'s forthcoming software right out of the box to review designs in digital format. As part of the announcement, Autodesk will incorporate support for publishing DWF files to the XPS specification.

"Together with Autodesk, we are bringing the powerful capabilities of Windows Vista and XPS to the CAD software space, expanding our customers' horizons when it comes to sharing and collaborating on design information," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. "Today's news is an important milestone in our shared vision for software that works the way people do."

According to Gisela D. Wilson, director of IDC's Product, Project and Portfolio Management Solutions service, "This is a significant development for the manufacturing, engineering and construction industries' supply chains. No doubt, DWF is emerging as an important standard for new product development and introduction workflows. With today's announcement, the DWF platform will become more accessible for secure team collaboration among globally dispersed manufacturers, suppliers and customers."

More Efficient, Productive Collaboration

Windows Vista and XPS will allow CAD users and their teammates to collaborate more easily, work more productively through the operating system's advanced search capabilities, and provide richer, more precise design content for customers. DWF encapsulates the rich details of designs, maps and data in compact, high-fidelity files, so that designers can easily share specific ideas with their suppliers, contractors and customers. The recipient will be able to instantly review designs using built-in Windows Vista tools. Where users once risked loss of detail and communication of design intent to paper and other file formats, they can now know their teams will have specific information, deeper insight and a rich understanding of designs without needing to become expert in design software.

"Working with Microsoft, we're liberating our customers from paper-based sharing and proprietary software that might otherwise limit use and cause costly project or product delays due to lack of clarity or insight," said Amar Hanspal, vice president, Autodesk Collaboration Solutions. "In effect, Windows Vista and XPS's integration in DWF technology democratizes access to CAD data, by making it possible for engineers and designers to share the right information with the right people at the right time."

In addition to automatic DWF file viewing, the Windows Vista desktop search function will make it easier and faster for customers to find relevant design files with Live Icons and Preview Pane features. For example, a product designer can search for files based on specifications, designs, or any piece of related data such as an address or supplier's name. Regardless of where the information is stored, Windows Vista returns Live Icons -- thumbnail images of files retrieved -- that let the designer see files' general content at a glance and choose the right one, without scrolling through a conventional text directory and checking large files that can take as much as several minutes to open. The designer might choose to search for meta-data tags instead, and use the search function's preview pane to confirm which file is the one sought.

MSFT: Steve Ballmer Kicks Off Most Significant Product Launch in Microsoft’s History

At a press conference at NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square, Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced the business availability of the Windows Vista™ operating system, the 2007 release of Microsoft® Office, and a host of other new product offerings designed to enable businesses to thrive in a world of instant communication, expanding information and constant change.

Today’s announcement that Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office release are available to volume licensing customers marks the beginning of the most significant product launch in company history and the first simultaneous release of Microsoft’s flagship products since the joint launch of the Windows® 95 operating system and Office 95 more than a decade ago. Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system will be available to consumers and organizations without volume license agreements on Jan. 30. In addition to Windows Vista and the 2007 release of Office, Ballmer discussed more than 30 new offerings for business customers.


According to Ballmer, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange Server 2007 are the result of an unprecedented collaboration between Microsoft and its customers. Real-life scenarios guided product development through feedback from customers who volunteered to let Microsoft watch them work in more than 1 billion user sessions. During testing, customers from around the world downloaded more than 5 million beta versions of the products and provided valuable feedback and suggestions.

“These are game-changing products,” Ballmer said. “It’s an incredible step forward for business computing in a year of unprecedented innovation from Microsoft. We expect that more than 200 million people will be using at least one of these products by the end of 2007.”

Early Adopters See Clear Business Value

Joining Ballmer at NASDAQ MarketSite was Michael Wolf, president and chief operating officer of MTV Networks.

“In the highly competitive and fast-moving media and entertainment industry, our advantage comes from our people,” Wolf said. “These new products provide rich collaboration tools and powerful information-discovery capabilities that will help our employees be more productive and more creative. This will strengthen our competitive edge, and that’s why we’ll deploy the new products to 3,000 desktops in the coming six months.”

According to a Capgemini study commissioned by Microsoft, early adopters expect dramatic gains in productivity through capabilities that address core business issues in new ways.

“Companies we’ve talked to are looking at driving major revenue increases, improved responsiveness to customers, and improved sales team win rates with the 2007 Microsoft Office system,” said Ken Edwards, vice president of Capgemini. “The early adopters have realized cost savings through process workflow automation, easier access to information, improved collaboration with colleagues, and lower costs of compliance. It’s all about creating better customer connections and empowering your people at less cost and with greater effectiveness.”

Industry Poised to Take Advantage of New Opportunities

Since the release of Windows 95 and Office 95, Microsoft has delivered critical platform advances with each major release of its two flagship products: TCP/IP in Windows 95 helped pave the way for the popularization of the Internet, for example, while wireless capabilities in Windows XP made mobile computing commonplace. New capabilities in Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system such as significant advances in graphics and pervasive support for XML and other technologies provide the framework for creating new experiences for end users. Significant server investments make the 2007 Office system a powerful platform for developing business applications that will eliminate the barriers between organizations, systems, processes and information.

During the press conference, Ballmer applauded the 640,000-strong worldwide partner ecosystem that has worked closely with Microsoft to prepare for today’s launch. More than 1,000 of the industry’s largest independent software vendors have been developing and testing solutions for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and approximately 3,000 partner solutions are in the final stages of development. In addition, more than 100,000 partner professionals in the United States have already completed training on these products, and this number is expected to grow to more than 1 million trained product experts worldwide within eight months.

“Industry analysts expect these products to represent more than $250 billion in partner revenue opportunity in the next 12 months,” Ballmer said. “No set of product releases in history has ever offered this level of opportunity for the industry as a whole.”

“Our clients are enthusiastic about these new products,” said Don Rippert, chief technology officer of Accenture. “They recognize that the new capabilities in Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system and Exchange Server 2007 have the potential to reshape the workplace and deliver dramatic benefits to the enterprise.”

Delivering the Promise of the People-Ready Business

According to Ballmer, the starting point for the new capabilities in Windows Vista, the 2007 Office release and the more than 30 products discussed today is Microsoft’s belief that people are the driving force behind business success.

“These products will enable companies to unleash the full potential of their people to build profitable relationships with customers, spearhead new innovations and drive business success,” Ballmer said. “Although many customers will deploy these products separately, together they will fundamentally change the way companies get value from business information.”

Together, these products focus on four critical areas:

• Simplifying how people work together. From new Windows capabilities designed for mobile workers and unified messaging enabled by Exchange Server 2007 to workflow and collaboration tools in Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, the new products revolutionize the way people work in teams and on the go.

• Finding information and improving business insight.Deep platform integration and availability of new search technologies and powerful, easy-to-use business intelligence tools will help enable employees to find and use information more easily, streamlining the path from idea to execution.

• Helping protect and manage content.Advanced content management and document retention tools combined with features to better protect data confidentiality make content authoring the starting point for automated business processes and regulatory compliance.

• Increasing security and helping reduce IT costs. With enhanced security by design and by default, the new versions of Windows, the 2007 Office release and Exchange Server 2007 deliver breakthrough security features. They streamline deployment and management, helping reduce costs and enabling IT departments to focus on providing new capabilities to deliver strategic advantage.



Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system also provide the core platform that will enable businesses to take advantage of the benefits of Internet-based software services. These products incorporate key XML and Web services technologies that will help companies tap into online services and select the mix of on-premise and hosted applications to deliver the right balance of control, convenience, cost-effectiveness, and security while helping increase productivity.

“During the last decade, Windows 95 and Office 95 transformed the way people work,” Ballmer said. “These new products announced today are the most advanced work that Microsoft has ever done, and I believe they signal the beginning of a new wave of innovation that will have an even more profound impact during the next decade.”




Products Released
An * below indicates the product is available now.


Client upgrades

• Windows Vista Business *

• Office Professional 2007 *

• Office Project Professional 2007 *

• Office Visio Professional 2007 *

• Office InfoPath 2007 *

• Office OneNote 2007 *

• Office Communicator 2007



Client enterprise editions

• Windows Vista Enterprise *

• Office Enterprise 2007 *



Server upgrades

• Exchange Server 2007 *

• Office SharePoint Server 2007*

• Office Project Server 2007 *

• Forefront Security for Exchange Server *

• Forefront Security for SharePoint *

• System Center Configuration Manager 2007



Server Enterprise editions

• Windows Rights Management Services *

• System Center Operations Manager Enterprise 2007

• Unified Messaging Services for Exchange *

• Excel and Forms Services for SharePoint *



New products

• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance

• Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 *

• Office Forms Server 2007 *

• Office SharePoint Designer 2007*

• Office Communications Server 2007

• “Voice Call Management" for Office Communication Server 2007

• Office PerformancePoint Server 2007

• Forefront Client Security

• Office Sharepoint Server for Search 2007 *

• SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007

• System Center “Desktop”

• Office Groove Server 2007*

• Office Groove 2007 *

• Exchange Hosted Services*

Dell Ready For Microsoft Windows Vista, Office 2007 And Exchange Server 2007

Dell today announced it is ready to help business customers adopt Microsoft® Windows Vista™, Office 2007™ and Exchange Server 2007™, based on a software migration strategy designed to reduce the time and complexity of managing the change.

Dell's latest server and storage products, desktops and notebooks are designed and optimized for the unique requirements of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft’s new software products are designed to help people work together, garner better business insights, protect customer environments and increase business productivity.

Dell has laid the foundation for an easy and fast transition to Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 through engineering expertise, customer tools and tailored services. For example beginning tomorrow, a customer with a volume licensing agreement from Microsoft can send Dell its Windows Vista image and have Dell factory-install it through its standard imaging service.

Dell's people, processes and tools are in place to help customers successfully complete the transition. For example Dell engineers have invested more than 100,000 man-hours during the past two years testing and validating Windows Vista to help ensure that customers’ customized hardware works as soon as they power up systems with the new operating system.

"This high degree of diligence exemplifies our commitment to put our engineering expertise to work for customers,” said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Dell Product Group. “Dell is taking the guesswork out of software transitions to help customers take back control of their information technology environments".


Tools Customers Need to Deploy Business-Critical Applications


With Windows Vista availability, Dell is enhancing its tool chest to help customers assess, upgrade and deploy desktops and notebooks in their networked environments.

Those tools include: The Windows Vista ROI Tool, gives customers quantifiable information that helps them plan and budget around their Windows Vista migration—customers can track their TCO for up to 3 years
Exchange Advisor Tool, a blueprint to optimize and simplify customers email environments including system sizing, availability, data security, backup and recovery, and archiving



Many Dell customers who have been testing Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 are seeing positive results. Esporte Clube Pinheiros, a network of athletic clubs in Brazil, needed tools to better manage its e-mail environment. It chose to migrate to Exchange Server 2007 to handle archiving, manage folders and maintain compliance.

"Dell Services got everything up and running so quickly," said Mario Cesar Corniani, supervisor of IT support at Esporte Clube Pinheiros. "Dell Services did an excellent job of deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and we hope to collaborate with Dell again on future projects."

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) is transitioning to Office 2007 and so far users are impressed with how the enhanced features like faster email work on Dell products. The LACOE also is moving from Exchange Server 2000 to Exchange Server 2007.

"Transitioning from Exchange 2000 Server to Exchange Server 2007 has been seamless,” said Robert Dotson, Senior Network Engineer, LACOE. “When we fully deploy the solution, I think it is going to be extremely well received."


Focused Infrastructure Services Based on Operational Excellence


Dell can help customers deploy Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 in complex IT environments with capabilities that span assessment, design and implementation services.

The company's unique approach to services capabilities is differentiated by a focused portfolio, operational excellence and single point of accountability. Dell offers training services to help customers plan, implement and manage Windows Vista, Office and Exchange environments. For more information, visit www.dell.com/vista

HPQ: HP Drives Customer Agility Up, Costs Down with Latest Identity Management Software

HP today announced enhancements to its identity and access management software suite to help customers increase agility, reduce risk and cut costs in the area of security and compliance management.

Introduced at the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit, the new integration initiatives and improved features of the HP Identity and Access Management (IdM) portfolio better automate changes to users’ rights, their access to services and the enforcement of business policies. This allows organizations to better align security policies with business goals.

HP IdM addresses an array of challenges, including the increasing numbers and types of users requiring access to internal resources, stringent regulatory demands for accurate reporting of user identities and access, and the constant flow of changes in user access.

Pay By Touch, the world leader in integrated biometric authentication, personalized marketing and payment solutions, uses the HP IdM solutions as a foundation for deploying its federated online authentication system called TrueMe™.

“Pay By Touch prides itself on offering the strongest, most secure and most convenient authentication services on the market, all of which are enabled by the underlying foundation of HP Identity and Access Management solutions,” said Jon Siegal, executive vice president, Pay By Touch. “We selected the HP Identity Management portfolio for the superior technologies, ease of deployment, compelling return on investment and unparalleled value it will continue to deliver.”

Within the enhanced HP IdM suite, HP Select Identity Software, HP Select Federation Software and HP Select Access Software have been seamlessly integrated with HP Select Audit Software to provide consolidated audit, attestation, monitoring, alerting, reporting and archiving capabilities. By centralizing and automating the entire audit lifecycle for both internal policies and regulations, the enhanced HP IdM portfolio enables customers to streamline, better automate and speed their ability to ensure compliance.

HP Select Identity has also been integrated with HP Service Desk Software to automate, monitor and track the process of resetting user passwords in heterogeneous IT environments. When these requests are handled from within the Service Desk, customers will realize significant benefits such as enhanced security, reduced costs through automated password reset and self-service, and simplified compliance through automated control over configuration changes.

“Individually, these IdM offerings enable more efficient management of IT services and the users who rely on them; when combined into a seamlessly integrated solution, they enable organizations to optimize the business outcome of their identity and access management initiatives,” said Deborah Traub, vice president, Product Strategy – Management Products, Software, HP.

For organizations that have adopted IT service management (ITSM) as a strategic direction, HP has integrated IdM user change processes with ITSM processes to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Commenting on the integral relationship between business processes and IdM, a recent report by Gartner noted that, “Understanding that IAM (Identity Access Management) processes are driven by information security, operational and, above all, business needs rather than dictated by the functionality of a particular IAM product, allows much-more-effective use of such a product.”(1)

The HP IdM suite also has been enhanced to better integrate with customers’ existing IT environments. The new policy management application interface for HP Select Access will enable easy integration with custom applications by providing program developers open access to the interface. Additionally, HP Select Federation will provide WS-Federation support for Microsoft® Active Directory Federation Services integration.

HP also announced that HP Select Access will now be bundled with HP-UX 11i, simplifying user management with improved provisioning and manageability. This tool enables a single click to define and apply high-level security policies that accompany a specific role within an organization. For example, the tool automatically assigns system backup and restore rights when an employee joins the operations team and withdraws these privileges when the employee leaves.

The enhanced HP IdM products, offered as a full suite or sold individually, are expected to be available by the end of the year. More information on the portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/software

SUNW: Sun Microsystems Teams with Ericsson and Nokia to Form the "Telecommunications Platform Initiative"

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced a new global cooperation with Ericsson and Nokia that aims to unite the Network Equipment Provider (NEP) community and assist telecommunications operators and service providers. Coming together as the Telecommunications Platform Initiative, members are jointly developing the requirements for a standardized, integrated telecommunications technology platform to simplify technology integration by enabling design, development and supply chain efficiencies.


"Ericsson is pleased to be a part of this collaborative community which is bringing us together to advance the industry as a whole," said Torbjorn Lundahl, Vice President of Ericsson Multimedia Systems. "With the backing of key NEPs and the advantage of Sun's community-building experience and in-depth understanding of open technologies, I am confident that this effort will lead to a much stronger industry alignment and bring major benefits to our customers."

Jyrki Holmala, Vice President, OSS Software, Networks, Nokia said: "The Telecommunications Platform Initiative recognizes that technology integration is a common challenge for all NEPs and shows our willingness to work together to find cost-efficient and open standards-based solutions for the industry. There is an excellent fit with Nokia's Operations Support Systems (OSS) middleware strategy and our Open EMS Suite platform product roadmaps."

Sun, Ericsson and Nokia Step Up to Benefit Industry

To succeed in today's competitive telecommunications market, operators must constantly find new ways to bring services to market more quickly while simultaneously boosting subscriber revenues. Sun, Ericsson and Nokia jointly recognized the industry need for a common platform infrastructure that would provide a uniform foundation to help address these market pressures. By collaborating on a series of publicly available requirements documents for the Operations, Administration and Management Layer (OA&M) and Service Layer environments, the members of this Initiative will provide the broader telecommunications industry with new alternatives to improve time to service, time to market and ultimately, time to revenues.

"We are faced with huge integration issues today when we purchase solutions from multiple NEPs," said Javier Gutierrez, Enablers Development Senior Manager of Telefónica Moviles España. "The results of the newly formed Telecommunications Platform Initiative will help us simplify platform management, allowing us to focus more on rapidly launching innovative services for our customers."

NEP Community Backs Initiative

By coming together to jointly define industry platform requirements, the NEPs benefit from greater freedom to focus more resources on their core competencies. The members of the Telecommunications Platform Initiative are defining and developing an architecture that will be easily adaptable to a wide range of applications.

"The feedback from our telecommunications customers on this new initiative has been extremely positive," said Peter Ewens, Vice President, OEM Business, Sun Microsystems. "Leading OEMs like Nokia and Ericsson are excited to see Sun step up and engage in a collaborative community effort to relieve some of their platform development and integration challenges through technology standardization across the industry."

Sun and the members of this Initiative will continue to be actively involved with other standardization and specification bodies such as PICMG (www.picmg.org ) and SCOPE (http://www.scope-alliance.org ).

About Ericsson
Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world. For more information: http://www.ericsson.com

About Nokia
Nokia is a world leader in mobile communications, driving the growth and sustainability of the broader mobility industry. Nokia connects people to each other and the information that matters to them with easy-to-use and innovative products like mobile phones, devices and solutions for imaging, games, media and businesses. Nokia provides equipment, solutions and services for network operators and corporations. www.nokia.com

About Telefonica Moviles Espana
Telefonica Moviles Espana (www.empresa.movistar.es ) is the mobile operator of Telefonica in the Spanish market. As of September 2006, Telefonica Moviles Espana had most than 21 million customers and a wide catalogue of services and applications with the latest mobile technology, such as UMTS. Movistar is the brand for the mobile companies of Telefonica Group in Spain and Latin America with exception of Brazil.

AMD Quad FX Platform with Dual Socket Direct Connect Architecture Redefines High-End Computing for Megatasking Enthusiasts

Charting another industry first for computing enthusiasts, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the AMD Quad FX Platform with Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture, the first dual-socket, multi-core desktop PC platform designed to take advantage of the latest enhancements in Windows® Vista™ Ultimate. As the supreme AMD platform for megatasking enthusiasts, the AMD Quad FX Platform is designed to redefine performance on the latest generation of multi-threaded applications.

The AMD Quad FX Platform is powered by pairs of the AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-70 series dual-core processors, the newest additions to the award-winning AMD Athlon 64 FX processor family. The new platform takes enthusiasts on a megatasking thrill ride, allowing them to make the most of their overall computing experience while gaming, editing audio/video and streaming high-definition content.

As consumers look forward to enhanced PC experiences made possible by Microsoft® Windows Vista, and the software industry moves to a multi-threading environment, the AMD Quad FX Platform is poised to meet the needs of enthusiasts who “megatask” - running multiple, demanding applications and multi-threaded games. With the introduction of Dual Socket Direct Connect Architecture, consumers can count on a platform that scales with their compute-intensive applications today and tomorrow given that the platform is designed for a seamless upgrade path to a total of eight processing cores with planned AMD native quad-core processors in 2007.

“The emergence of a dual-socket consumer platform is critical for enthusiasts who demand systems that offer the sheer power and system headroom to let the enthusiast configure this system to his or her heart’s content, and launch a fleet of entertainment and productivity applications at once,” said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president, Desktop Division, AMD. “AMD is redefining performance by enabling our customers to take advantage of the amazing megatasking capability of two AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors in the AMD Quad FX Platform.”

With AMD64 technology and Dual Socket Direct Connect Architecture, the new AMD Quad FX Platform offers scaleable performance enhancements on a personal workstation powered by AMD Athlon 64 FX processors. In addition, this consumer powerhouse platform is designed with next-generation platform innovations such as high-performance, low-latency unbuffered DDR2 memory and for Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) support with compatible operating systems.

“Windows Vista Ultimate is designed to take advantage of next-generation technology like AMD’s Quad FX Platform to provide amazing experiences for computer enthusiasts,” said Mike Sievert, corporate vice president, Windows, Microsoft. “With support for multi-core platforms growing in the industry, customers can look forward to more innovation from Microsoft and technology partners like AMD—innovation that provides truly immersive experiences in gaming and other high-performance applications.”

“Alienware and AMD have worked together for years to ensure the enthusiast community receives the best possible products and we were excited to showcase AMD’s megatasking powerhouse, the AMD Quad FX Platform at DigitalLife in New York last October,” said Mark Vena, Alienware’s Vice President of Marketing. “Alienware believes that the AMD Quad FX Platform is going to enable new levels of digital content and immersive entertainment applications with consumers and business professionals while our long-time relationship with AMD signifies exciting things to come in the future.”

NVIDIA, the chipset and multi-GPU launch partner for the AMD Quad FX platform, is excited about the potential of an enthusiast AMD dual-socket platform. “NVIDIA is pleased to be the launch partner for the launch of the new AMD Quad FX multi-GPU Platforms," said Drew Henry, general manager of MCP business at NVIDIA. "Our GeForce® 8 series of graphics processing units and the NVIDIA nForce® 680a media and communications processor deliver an ideal solution for megatasking enthusiasts who look to AMD and NVIDIA to provide the best products for multi-threaded games and applications.”

“VoodooPC shares AMD’s commitment to drive cool technologies that deliver more exciting, immersive and personalized entertainment experiences to our customers,” said Rahul Sood, chief technologist, Global Gaming business unit, HP. “The AMD Quad FX Platform could very well open a new world of significant possibilities to address the insane demands of enthusiasts.”

With the flexibility of the AMD Quad FX Platform, systems can be configured to support a variety of enthusiast needs, including those of aspiring audio/video content creators.

Dan Gregoire is a digital artist who counts many of the world’s top movie and advertising studios among his satisfied customers. As an innovator of the digital 3-D story-boarding technique called “pre-visualization” that is sweeping the film industry, he clearly understands the need for speed, performance and the all important upgrade path offered by AMD multi-core technology.

“We’ve been able to consistently increase the value we deliver to our customers simply by following AMD’s roadmap -- 64-bit addressability, adding more cores,” said Dan Gregoire, CEO of Halon Entertainment. “AMD’s technology helps us create amazing cinematic effects, but even more exciting to me is that it is available to everyone.”

“Audio loves more cores. More cores and AMD’s balanced architecture means I never have to make artistic compromises due to technology limitations,” said Elliot Scheiner, Grammy and Emmy-winning audio producer/engineer who puts his trust in AMD to help deliver pristine sonic quality to please his professional clientele.

Unprecedented Capabilities with the AMD Quad FX Platform The AMD Quad FX Platform offers enthusiasts absolute performance, flexibility, and customization by including outrageous features like twelve SATA controllers designed to enable up to nine (9) terabytes of storage using currently available drive technologies (for over 450 high-definition movies), and increased spacing between PCI-E slots to accommodate up to four high-performance graphics cards.

The AMD Quad FX Platform is designed to enable infinite options for demanding enthusiasts to tweak their custom systems, including the ability to drive four or even eight monitors at the same time when using up to four PCI-E graphics cards.

Dual Socket Direct Connect Architecture
Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture enables high-bandwidth communication between matched pairs of AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-70, AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-72, and AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-74 dual-core processors. DSDC Architecture is designed for the multi-core, multi-threaded future with planned platform upgradeability to eight cores.

Enthusiasts can benefit from having twice the number of processor cores due to a dual-socket configuration.

Availability and Pricing
Pricing for pairs of the new AMD Athlon 64 FX-70, FX-72 and FX-74 dual-core processors is $599, $799 and $999, respectively for PIB. For pricing details, please visit: www.amd.com/pricing

AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series dual-core processors are expected to be available from NewEgg throughout North America on November 30. Worldwide product availability is expected by early 2007. AMD Quad FX Platform systems are expected to be available from Vigor, Cyber Power and IBUYPOWER and other major system builders are expected to offer systems in the near future.



AMD Quad FX Platform Customer and Technology Partner Support Addendum“We are excited to be working with AMD to introduce a powerful new platform that offers amazing megatasking performance capabilities for our common customers," said Raymond Chen, Vice President of Marketing for ASUS Computer International. "AMD’s culture of path-breaking innovation makes it possible for users to enjoy a superb gaming experience and we share their mission of pushing the limits of performance computing."

“As we continue to raise the performance bar on next generation memory capabilities, we are proud to have our new high-frequency DOMINATOR memory solution turbo-charge AMD’s Quad FX Platform,” said John Beekley, VP of Applications Engineering of Corsair. “With AMD’s processors, our market-leading memory modules are able to attain outstanding speed and latency performance, and our common customers, computer hardware enthusiasts and gamers, greatly benefit from these advances in memory performance.”

“Users can get the most out of their systems by loading up AMD’s Quad FX Platform with high-quality Crucial memory," said Mike Sanor, Crucial technical support manager. “Whether they’re using standard or high-performance Ballistix™ memory, enthusiasts continue to push their systems to the limit by combining Crucial memory with AMD’s cutting-edge processors.”

“AMD’s products have consistently exceeded our expectations as well as those of our customers, and our expectation for the AMD Quad FX Platform is that enthusiasts will benefit tremendously from the platform’s performance enhancements and enjoy an immersive computing experience,” said Eric Cheung, CEO, CyberPower PC. “Gamers are always looking for the most cinematic computing experience and we applaud AMD for responding to these growing demands by pushing the boundaries of innovation with the AMD Quad FX Platform.”

"Based on the dual-socket Direct Connect Architecture, AMD Quad FX platform is an epoch-making innovation and ultimate platform in the personal computing area, delivering super megatasking performance and extreme computing experience to enthusiasts", said Ms. Bai Xiangchun, General Manager of Product Center, Founder Technology. "As a leading Chinese PC provider, Founder Technology has successfully launched a broad range of AMD processor-based PCs, the launch of AMD Quad FX platform is expected to set off a wave of new computing applications in the industry."

“Multi-core applications and high-performance, high-capacity hard drives are the future of performance gaming. Through our work with AMD to ensure product compatibility, we remain at the forefront of this computing innovation,” said Marcia Bencala, vice president, Corporate Strategy and Product Planning, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “AMD’s Quad FX Enthusiast platform combined with Hitachi’s Deskstar hard drives bring the capacity and performance required for a superior gaming experience.”

“The new AMD Quad FX platform will undoubtedly be a win with performance-hungry enthusiasts and iBUYPOWER is proud to offer our customers this superior computing experience,” said Darren Su, Executive Vice President, iBUYPOWER. “Enthusiasts demand the highest possible processor performance for a truly turbo-charged computing experience - a demand that the AMD has fulfilled with its latest platform innovation.”

"Kingston has collaborated with AMD in the gaming market since the initial launch of the AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 and applauds AMD's advancements in gaming CPU technology," said Mark Tekunoff, Senior Technology Manager, Kingston. "With Quad FX and Kingston's HyperX DDR2 memory products, our mutual customers can receive the best gaming experience available," continued Tekunoff.

“We are excited about Maingear’s upcoming products based on the AMD Quad FX Platform”, said Wallace Santos, President of Maingear. “AMD understands the needs and desires of Maingear’s customers and by delivering products to the market that are capable of supporting games that are becoming more and more demanding, AMD and Maingear will revolutionize the way enthusiasts use their PCs.”

“Mushkin applauds the exceptional performance that AMD’s Quad FX Enthusiast Platform will offer to even the most demanding PC enthusiast and we are proud to support this next-generation technology with our performance-enhanced memory modules,” said Brian Flood, Product Development Manager, Mushkin. “The introduction of multi-core processors has revolutionized PC gaming and AMD has been at the forefront of this technology revolution with their next-generation platform innovations that combine the best in processors and performance memory.”

“We are proud to be supporting the release of AMD’s Quad FX Platform in our capacity as a premier online retailer of leading edge technology products and are excited to play a part in making this technology available for gamers and enthusiasts seeking ultimate megatasking performance,” said Chad Chen, V.P. of Marketing, Newegg.com. “As a customer-focused company, which ships 98% of all customer orders within 1 business day, we remain committed to offering the most innovative technology today.”

“OCZ is excited to work closely with AMD on the AMD Quad FX Platform, an innovative platform that ensures the ultimate level of stability, performance and scalability to give gamers that extra edge,” said Alex Mei, VP of Marketing, OCZ Technology. “With AMD’s multi-core processors, users are able to run multimedia applications with enhanced performance results backed by OCZ’s memory capabilities, which fully support this optimum PC experience at every level.”

“Thermaltake’s main business model has always been to deliver the most compelling and technologically advanced product to our customers,” said Joseph Lin, Director of Global Strategic Marketing Group at Thermaltake. “With Armor Extreme Edition chassis, we’ve re-engineered the world’s best-selling gaming chassis specifically for the AMD Quad FX platform. The AMD Quad FX platform along with Thermaltake Armor Extreme Edition is able to take advantage of the latest enhancements in the upcoming Windows Vista™ Ultimate and for megatasking PC enthusiasts and power-users who run the most demanding tasks simultaneously.”

“Our Prime Series PCs will be able to exceed today's limits by utilizing platforms like the AMD Quad FX Platform, said Mr. Takayuki Miyazaki, manager, planning dev., Third Wave Corporation. “We will be able to provide our customers not just high performance, but a platform with planned upgradeability to 8 cores. We believe that this ultimate platform will meet the needs of the enthusiasts with multi-threaded Operating Systems and applications.”

“Customers who buy products at TigerDirect expect a great experience from their purchases,” said Carl Fiorentino, president, TigerDirect. “The AMD Quad FX Platform will present customers with an ultimate megatasking PC and offer them personal workstation-type performance.”

"We are happy with AMD's continuous innovations in the multi-core computing area. Based on Dual-Socket Direct Connect Architecture, the AMD Quad FX platform is an epoch-making multi-core computing solution designed for enthusiasts who crave super megatasking performance and an extreme computing experience", said Mr. Xing Maowei, General Manager of Desktop Product Division, Tongfang Computer System Business Group. "It is an ultimate personal computing platform. It will definitely stage a new round of platform revolution in the processor industry, facilitating the competition for new technologies in multi-core computing. Based on AMD's ongoing leadership in multi-core computing technologies, the AMD Quad FX platform is expected to bring a brand-new computing experience to enthusiasts."

“At Vigor, our aim is to provide the ultimate experience to our customers and AMD’s Quad FX Platform will help our customers realize yet another significant performance gain in megatasking,” said Aaron Chen, Chief Executive Officer at Vigor. “By building products that deliver the kind of performance that enthusiasts crave, AMD has been a valuable partner in our ongoing endeavor to combine innovation and artistry, helping us stay true to our mission of linking cutting-edge technologies with ultimate customer expectations.”

“As a market leader in high performance hard drives, Western Digital knows that customers operating graphically intense games and applications with enhanced performance capabilities require high performance systems such as AMD’s Quad FX Platform to realize the potential of those applications,” said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of Enterprise Storage for Western Digital. “Much like the WD Raptor X, which combines amazing performance and reliability from a 10,000 RPM enterprise-class platform, AMD’s new platform represents the latest innovation in next-generation gaming platforms.”

CSCO: SingTel To Deploy Cisco Wireless Mesh Network in the North Region of Singapore

Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) will be deploying a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) mesh network from Cisco® in the North region of Singapore. SingTel's proposal to deliver seamless public-access wireless broadband services was accepted by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). The project is part of the Singapore government's Wireless@SG initiative to extend the broadband experience for its citizens outside of homes and offices to virtually every part of the country. SingTel's wholly owned subsidiary NCS, a Cisco Certified Gold Partner, is managing the implementation of the network.

SingTel aims to deploy more than 2,400 hotspots by May 2007. In Wi-Fi mesh networks, many of the access points are not physically connected to a wired network. The access points create a mesh that routes back to the network. This configuration enables SingTel to provide broadband-based services to a large area where no wired network is available. With the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, which includes a broad range of wireless devices and centralized management components, SingTel can also manage both their indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots centrally, reducing management costs and complexities.

"The SingTel, NCS and Cisco collaboration will draw on the strengths of each of the parties. SingTel's experience and commitment, NCS' expertise and Cisco's technology leadership are a strong combination that will help enable high-quality Wi-Fi services for our customers," said Allen Lew, CEO of SingTel (Singapore). "We selected Cisco's Wi-Fi mesh technology because it delivers performance and reliability while being highly scalable and easy to deploy. The solution uses well-established standards and offers a substantially reduced risk, cost and time to market."

In the first phase of the Wi-Fi network rollout, Cisco Aironet® 1500 Series lightweight outdoor mesh access points will be attached to city buildings and streetlights to provide four square miles of coverage. To reduce management costs and centralize network monitoring, SingTel will use Cisco 4400 Series Wireless LAN Controllers and the Cisco Wireless Control System.

The unique Cisco Adaptive Wireless Path Protocol provides the key intelligence for effectively running Cisco Wi-Fi mesh networks. Just as routers serve as traffic-management systems for wired networks, so the Cisco Aironet 1500 Series access points use sophisticated mathematical algorithms to decide the optimal ways to route traffic from access point to access point and back to the main wired network. The protocol helps traffic avoid congested nodes, offering Wi-Fi networks a "self-healing" capability. This is where Cisco's routing expertise comes into play. Just as with wired networks, the quality of a Wi-Fi mesh network boils down to the ability of the equipment to route traffic intelligently, efficiently and dependably.

"This project further deepens Cisco's relationship with SingTel and gives us an opportunity to continue to develop our contribution to the Singapore government's iN2015 (Intelligent Nation 2015) masterplan. Wi-Fi mesh networks are ideal for Wireless@SG deployments because they are easy to deploy and maintain. Many of our municipality and city council customers from around the world cite low costs, central management, multiband wireless device support, security and breadth of service as the main benefits of Wi-Fi mesh networks. This enables them to provide their citizens with the platform to extend their life's experience on the human network anytime, anywhere," said Craig Gledhill, Cisco's managing director for Singapore and Brunei.

About SingTel
SingTel is Asia's leading communications company with operations and investments in more than 20 countries and territories around the world. Serving both the corporate and consumer markets, it is committed to bringing the best of global communications to customers in the Asia Pacific and beyond. For more information, visit www.singtel.com

About NCS Group
NCS Group is a leading information technology (IT) and communications engineering services provider with about 4,000 staff located in 10 countries across the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. With proven expertise in consulting, development, systems integration and infrastructure management and solutions, gained while serving government and commercial organisations across the region, NCS delivers end-to-end support for every organisation's technology needs. NCS is headquartered in Singapore and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SingTel Group. For more information, please visit http://www.ncs.com.sg

BRCM: Broadcom to Acquire LVL7 Systems, Inc., a Developer of Networking Software

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LVL7 Systems, Inc., a privately-held developer of production-ready networking software that enables networking original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to reduce development expenses and compress development timelines.

"By combining LVL7's software expertise with Broadcom® networking products, we are addressing our customers' growing demand for integrated hardware and software solutions," said Ford Tamer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Enterprise Networking Group. "Additionally, the software offerings will enable Broadcom customers to address new and emerging markets -- such as wireless LAN switching or voice over IP -- more quickly, increasing the value of their current platforms."

LVL7's FASTPATH® family of software will enable Broadcom to enhance its existing product offering in the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market segment. OEMs targeting the SMB market will benefit from the additional software capability that Broadcom is adding to its existing platforms because a complete software solution enables those customers to get new systems to market quickly and cost effectively.

"Broadcom has been a premier partner of LVL7 for several years, and the company's established presence in the network silicon market makes a long-term partnership ideal," said Erik Dixon, CEO of LVL7 Systems. "Our software integrated with Broadcom's industry-leading Ethernet silicon will enable customers to accelerate time to market and reduce system cost."

At closing of the acquisition, Broadcom expects to pay approximately $62 million in cash to acquire outstanding shares of capital stock and vested stock options of LVL7 and liquidate outstanding LVL7 debt. A portion of the cash consideration payable to the stockholders will be placed into escrow pursuant to the terms of the acquisition agreement. The boards of directors of the two companies and the stockholders of LVL7 have approved the merger. The closing, which is expected to occur during Broadcom's fourth quarter ending December 31, remains subject to customary closing conditions. Broadcom may record a one-time charge for purchased in-process research and development expenses related to the acquisition in its fourth quarter. The amount of that charge, if any, has not yet been determined.

About LVL7 Systems

LVL7 creates production-ready networking software that enables communication system manufacturers to reduce development costs and deliver IP/Ethernet products to market faster. Integrated with the industry's leading silicon and embedded operating systems, the company's FASTPATH® software portfolio spans the small-medium-sized business, enterprise, wireless LAN, and telecom access marketplaces. LVL7 is a privately-held company located near Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. For more information, visit www.LVL7.com

HPQ: HP Helps CIOs Optimize Business Outcomes of IT with New Project and Portfolio Management Software

HP today unveiled new project and portfolio management software that gives customers real-time visibility and control over the entire IT portfolio to help reduce the business risk of IT project failure.

Available immediately, Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center 7.0 provides chief information officers and other IT executives with sophisticated project, demand and portfolio management as well as an integrated approach to managing projects across their lifecycles.

The software addresses some of the biggest challenges of delivering clear and measurable business results from IT by helping to avoid the stalled or failed projects, and the waste of time, budget and resources, that can come with the use of rudimentary project management tools and manual processes.

“To prioritize how they’ll support business goals, senior IT and business executives need visibility into all the demand for IT, and they need to match that to resource supply, including both budget and skilled staff,” said Matt Light, research director, Gartner Inc. “Today, these executives can more strategically select an ideal project portfolio using solutions that help compute alternate scenarios of proposed projects, given resource capacity forecast from in-flight projects and other work commitments, and factoring in risks and expected returns.”

“Operating more than 1,200 supermarkets in the southeastern and mid-Atlantic United States, Food Lion relies on portfolio management to help deliver the freshest and best quality products to its customers,” said Pat Tagnani, director, Project Management Office, Food Lion, LLC. “Using Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center provides us with real-time visibility into all of our strategic initiatives; we can quickly identify the right projects and staff them with the right people.”

New and enhanced functionality in Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center 7.0 helps IT organizations:

• Govern IT by managing strategic projects and operational activities and aggregating operational demand and proposal requests through a single user interface;


• Improve efficiency by automatically optimizing the selection of projects and operational activities through the new portfolio optimization engine, based on user-defined criteria such as budget allocation to certain corporate initiatives;


• Achieve and maintain regulatory compliance across field-level audit trails to track all changes to projects and critical applications;


• Aggregate legacy desktop data, such as Microsoft® Project and other project data sources, to create a unified view across both strategic projects and operational activities; and


• Adopt either top-down or bottom-up project planning and execution with a flexible approach to portfolio management.

“This new software from HP helps our customers address their most challenging IT governance problems and maximize the returns from their IT portfolio,” said Deborah Traub, vice president, Product Strategy, Management Products, Software, HP. “Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center is a key part of our strategy to help our customers optimize the business outcomes of IT.”

In fact, HP Consulting & Integration is standardizing on Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center for its Architecture & Governance Practice as well as being integrated as a strategic element of HP Services’ solution for IT Shared Services Centers.

“As a leading e-commerce company in South Korea, IT is the business for INTERPARK Corporation,” said Jeong Won El, director, IT Supporting Division/Technology Division, INTERPARK Corporation. “Rather than looking at portfolio management as an annual exercise, Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center lets us evaluate new proposals against in-flight projects without having to do a lot of detail work. This helps us make smart decisions about how to deploy our resources in real-time.”

Product availability

Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center may be delivered as an in-house deployment or through Mercury Managed Services, which enables customers to access Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center software as a hosted service over the Internet and leverage an expert team of service professionals.

This product is also available through HP’s network of partner companies, including India-based Wipro.

“Wipro is pleased to be a preferred HP partner for helping customers upgrade to Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center 7.0. Wipro has a very strong relationship with HP in providing value-based governance solutions using this product,” said Suraj Prakash, vice president, Quality Consulting Group, Wipro. “We have leveraged our patented PMO solution, Process Packs®, built on Mercury Project and Portfolio Management Center, to deliver best practices and accelerated results to our customers.”

HPQ: HP Bridges Gap Between Facilities and IT to Solve Data Center Power and Cooling Challenges

HP today announced a new energy management system and key initiatives to bridge the gap between facilities and IT to help customers dramatically reduce data center operating costs.

Based on work from the past four years by HP Labs, the new energy management system, called HP Dynamic Smart Cooling, is designed to deliver 20 to 45 percent savings in cooling energy costs or allow additional equipment to be added to the data center while keeping net power costs constant.

The HP system uses advanced software residing in an intelligent control node to continuously adjust air conditioning settings based on real-time air-temperature measurements from a network of sensors deployed on IT racks. Dynamic Smart Cooling actively manages the environment to deliver cooling where it is needed most, enabling essential cost savings to end users.

Due to its positive impact on the bottom line and the environment, Dynamic Smart Cooling will be adopted by HP’s own IT organization for its six new consolidated data centers in three geographic zones in the United States. It also is an important addition to HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure offering, which is the foundation for building next-generation data centers.

“By bringing facilities and IT together, HP customers can now change energy from a fixed cost to a variable cost within the data center,” said Paul Perez, vice president, Storage, Networks and Infrastructure, Enterprise Servers and Storage, HP. “HP’s holistic approach breaks tradition to solve the conflict between energy efficiency and IT scalability. Customers can now treat data centers as systems to be as carefully managed as the hardware running within them.”

Centered on Dynamic Smart Cooling, HP is creating a new partner program through which the company will work with leading architecture, engineering, equipment, technology, utility, real estate and service companies to accelerate adoption of energy efficiency solutions for next-generation data centers. The Data Center Solution Builder program will be managed under Perez and will feature EYP Mission Critical Facilities as its premiere partner.

“DSC solves a big problem the IT industry has been struggling with for quite some time,” said Peter Gross, chief executive officer and chief technology officer, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Inc. “DSC not only dramatically improves the energy performance of cooling systems in data centers but also delivers improvements in overall data center reliability. It is the first step toward the ultimate goal of this industry – fully integrated and optimized data centers that bridge the gap between facilities and IT domains.”

HP also has formed an internal Smart Data Center design team that leverages some of the best minds across the company focused on lowering total cost of ownership through flexible power and cooling management products and services. The effort is backed by an investment of more than $10 million per year and is based on a portfolio of 100s of existing patents.

Expanded portfolio of power and cooling solutions

Dynamic Smart Cooling integrates well with existing HP innovations in power and cooling such as HP Thermal Logic, a key component of the HP BladeSystem c-Class architecture. Together, the technologies deliver significant savings to customers while reducing a data center’s overall environmental footprint. Dynamic Smart Cooling also can be used with any standard IT equipment rack and incorporates standard interfaces to most air conditioning and building management systems, making it ideal for new construction and retrofit projects.

HP also announced a 3-Phase Power portfolio, enabling facilities deployments to match the rapid evolution of IT equipment governed by “Moore’s Law.” By allowing power distribution and protection to be deployed in a modular fashion, customers have the flexibility to use what they need when they need it – while taking advantage of generational improvements over time. This yields higher density deployments with investment protection against unpredictable growth.

Bringing an IT solutions approach to increasingly demanding data center power requirements, the HP 3-Phase Power portfolio includes a modular three-phase Uninterruptible Power System and 100KVA Power Distribution Rack. When used with HP standard racks, these two offerings allow customers to deploy redundant power grids to support cost-effective, site-level power distribution and remote site monitoring, resulting in significant data center space savings.

Environmental commitment at Gartner event

Dynamic Smart Cooling is one of the many energy efficiency initiatives at HP that help the company and its customers reduce overall environmental impact. In support of this announcement, made at the Gartner 25th Annual Data Center conference, HP is reinforcing its environmental commitment by making the event CarbonNeutral® – emissions of the global warming gas carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by the event have been anticipated and all related CO2 emissions will be offset by HP’s purchase of credits. These credits are an investment in climate-friendly technologies like solar and wind power generation.

Pricing and availability

HP Dynamic Smart Cooling and the HP 3-Phase Power portfolio is expected to be available worldwide in the third calendar quarter of 2007. Pricing for the solutions will be released upon availability.

More information on the announcements above is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/nextgenpowerandcooling. More information on HP Power and Cooling technologies and the Data Center Solution Builder program is available at www.hp.com/go/powerandcooling and www.hp.com/go/dcsb, respectively.

IBM Highlights The Science Behind The Latest Videogames

IBM (NYSE: IBM) highlighted the deep science behind the latest video games and encouraged middle school students to pursue careers in math and science at an open house at the company’s $3 billion East Fishkill, New York, microchip manufacturing center, which produces the chips that power the latest systems from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

IBM will distribute an education package, including print, video and other multi-media materials, to members of IBM’s On Demand Community, IBM’s global volunteer initiative with nearly 80,000 employees and retirees, highlighting the technology behind the latest video game systems and encouraging students to embrace math and science education at an early age.

Educational sessions at East Fishkill were led by Dr. Michael Nelson, IBM’s director of Internet Technology and Strategy. “The introduction of next generation systems from the leaders in video gaming offers a unique opportunity to reinforce the importance of math and science education at the earliest possible age,” said Nelson. “Kids love gaming, and math and science make games possible.”

IBM has a strong history of encouraging students to study math and science so that they are prepared for future technical careers. Through numerous programs beginning in the pre-Kindergarten years through high school, IBM is reaching out to students and teachers to introduce math and science, support interest in these subjects, and encourage students to continue their studies.

“There is so much opportunity for students in the technical fields, and gaming is opening many new and exciting options,” said Robin Willner, vice president of IBM Global Community Initiatives. “But in order for students to play in the future of gaming, they need to be prepared academically. Today we’re trying to make that connection for the students in a fun, interactive way.”

At the open house, students from Bronx and Dutchess counties attended a presentation about gaming technology and how it is changing education, health care, energy exploration and other industries. Students saw applications such as a 3-D rendering of the human heart and met Jai, IBM’s gaming representative in the digital world. In addition, students had the opportunity to experience first hand the next generation of gaming consoles and meet some of the IBM employees responsible for developing the chips that power them.

“An important factor in keeping kids engaged in math and science is making the subjects interesting and relevant to them,” said Willner. “Gaming technology is fun and helps us demonstrate that science and technology careers are fun and full of opportunities, too. Taking gaming technology to students is the perfect next step in IBM’s work to encourage students to stick with their math and science studies.”

According to Willner, “It’s never too early to start learning about the science behind gaming.” Starting with pre-K students, IBM’s KidSmart Early Learning Program introduces children to math and science through its Young Explorer computers equipped with early-learning educational software housed in colorful children’s desk furniture.

IBM keeps students’ interest up in the middle school years through IBM's TryScience Web site, the first online, global science museum, makes it easy and fun for children, teachers and parents to explore the world of science and engineering. In addition, IBM EX.I.T.E. Camps, week-long, summer day camps for middle school girls held at IBM facilities, show girls exciting career opportunities in technology and engineering, introduce them to female role models, and provide hands-on experiences in technical activities that are fun, challenging and educational. Through IBM MentorPlace, IBM employees mentor students online providing academic assistance and career counseling, while letting them know that adults do care about their issues and concerns.


In 2006, IBM and the Computer Science Teachers Association introduced free access to computer science resources for high school teachers. With just a few clicks, teachers can access a series of lesson plans, guidebooks and topic overviews to incorporate concepts of computer programming and Web design into everyday computer science, math and science classes.

Rhodia (RHA), IBM and ADP Sign Strategic Agreement to Optimize Rhodia's Human Resources Organization

Rhodia (NYSE: RHA), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and ADP (NYSE: ADP) today signed a 7-year strategic worldwide agreement to optimize Rhodia's Human Resources organization by outsourcing the administrative and support areas of key HR processes

The partnership with IBM and with ADP will allow Rhodia to focus on strategic HR issues, while increasing the flexibility of the organization to better manage variations in its business scope and development in fast growing regions. The agreement is expected to reduce costs of the related HR processes by 30%.

IBM will provide Rhodia with support for HR processes such as recruitment, training, compensation and benefits, workforce administration and analysis, as well as specialized technology, including Global Human Resources Information Systems to improve process standardization.

ADP's expertise in personnel administration processes and the global coverage of its operations will allow Rhodia to take advantage of global comprehensive outsourcing payroll services on ADP's GlobalView(SM) platform.

The implementation of this innovative approach in Rhodia's operations in Europe, Asia, North and Latin America during 2007 and 2008 is expected to significantly improve Rhodia's HR processes and will represent a new stage in the Group's strategy of optimizing the costs of its support functions.

"Partnering with IBM and with ADP will be a major driver in building a leaner, faster and more strategic human resources organization," said Bernard Chambon, Rhodia's Group Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Communications and Sustainable Development. "Our HR teams will thus be able to concentrate on key tasks such as change management, competency and career development and social relations, and to support the growth of our businesses.

Simon Free, Vice President, Managed Business Process Services IBM France and North West Africa, added: "Rhodia is a global company, headquartered in France, and the agreement with IBM for business transformation allows them to become more flexible and adaptive while focusing employees on the company's core competencies. IBM's extensive experience in human resources services and the chemical industry will bring innovation and new efficiencies to Rhodia and its employees."

"We're pleased to help Rhodia uphold its commitment to delivering quality services to all of its employees worldwide," said George Stoeckert, President of the Employer Services International Division of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. "Rhodia's selection of ADP underscores the momentum of our global offering. It also demonstrates the confidence companies are placing in GlobalView as the global outsourcing service of choice for multinational corporations that want to ensure consistent service and regulatory compliance worldwide."

Rhodia is a global specialty chemicals company recognized for its strong technology positions in Performance Materials, Functional Chemicals and the Organics and Services clusters. Partnering with major players in the automotive, electronics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, consumer care, tires, and paints and coatings markets, Rhodia offers tailor-made solutions combining original molecules and technologies to respond to customers' needs. Rhodia subscribes to the principles of Sustainable Development communicating its commitments and performance openly with stakeholders. Rhodia generated sales of EUR 5 billion in 2005 and employs around 19,500 people worldwide. Rhodia is listed on Euronext Paris and the New York Stock Exchange. For more information, please visit our global website at www.rhodia.com


ADP -- Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (NYSE: ADP), with nearly $9 billion in revenues and more than 570,000 clients worldwide, is one of the largest providers of a broad range of premier, mission-critical, cost-effective transaction processing and information-based business solutions. Employer Services (ES), a division of ADP, offers the widest range of HR, payroll, and benefits administration solutions from a single source, to meet the extensive business needs of employers worldwide. Built with more than 50 years of industry experience, ADP ES' cost-effective, easy-to-use solutions provide superior value to companies of all sizes. Approximately 540,000 companies rely on ADP ES for unparalleled service and compliance expertise, allowing them to focus on other core activities. For more information about ADP ES or to contact a local ADP sales office, reach us at 1.800.225.5237 or visit the company's Web site at www.ADP.com

ADP Employer Services International, part of the Employer Services division, offers GlobalView in more than 30 countries worldwide, expanding to 50 countries by 2008. More than 50 multinational companies representing more than 460,000 employees globally have selected GlobalView for human resource outsourcing service worldwide. For more information about GlobalView, please visit www.globalview.adp.com

Texas DIR Awards IBM a Contract for State Data Center Services That Offers Significant Benefits to the State

A newly signed agreement between the Texas Department of Information Resources and IBM (NYSE: IBM) delivers expanded services and lower costs for data center services. The seven-year contract is valued at $863 million with three optional one-year extensions. After taking all new and retained costs into account this will save Texas $25 million in 2008-2009 and $159 million over the base contract period. The contract leverages the buying power of the state to modernize the technology infrastructure, enhance information security and disaster recovery capabilities, and provide flexibility to meet changing business requirements.

I'm committed to making Texas the leader in technology advances while ensuring our citizens receive the best value for their tax dollars. Data center consolidation accomplishes both and is just good business," said Texas Governor Rick Perry.
"This contract replaces and expands an existing contract for data center services that has been in effect since 1996. It is an important ingredient in our commitment to the shared technology infrastructure envisioned in House Bill 1516 that I authored last session," said State Representative Carl Isett.

"This agreement leverages our existing assets at the state data center in San Angelo and ensures continued physical and technical upgrades will be made to that facility," said State Senator Robert Duncan, HB 1516 sponsor.

The contract includes over 20 percent historically underutilized business (HUB) participation, performance metrics, extensive reporting, and collaborative governance with participation by all 27 agencies. With the new agreement come increased security levels for assets and information not currently seen in state government. As part of the agreement, IBM, working through sub-contractor Unisys, will establish a new data center in Austin.

The contract also addresses career opportunities for state employees who currently perform data center services. Specifically, each affected employee will receive a job offer from IBM or one of three subcontractors -- Unisys, Xerox or Pitney Bowes -- with at least a 5 percent increase over their current salaries. No relocation will be required.

"Eighteen months ago we established specific milestones to complete by this year-end. I am proud that we met all the milestones and now have a solid contract in place with meaningful performance requirements," said William Transier, DIR Board Chair.

"We designed this process to be highly inclusive. Hundreds of employees at all levels of government worked together on the scope, the request for offer, and the evaluation on this contract to ensure it meets the needs of each agency," said Larry Olson, Chief Technology Officer for the State of Texas. "I want to publicly acknowledge the hard work and the deep commitment to this project that we received from staff in all 27 agencies."

"This initiative demonstrates the State of Texas' commitment to the strategic use of Information Technology across its government agencies," said David Liederbach, General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services, Public Sector. "Ultimately, the taxpayer benefits from more effective technology spending. IBM will help the state deliver the latest technology capabilities to a broader group of Texas agencies to ensure consistent access to information, improved disaster recovery and data security, and most importantly, better overall service to its citizens."

This contract follows industry best practices and was developed with support from Technology Partners International, Inc. (TPI) and Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP, two premier outsourcing advisory firms.

The contract becomes effective immediately, providing sufficient time for a smooth transition of staff and services before the current contract expires on August 31, 2007.

The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) promotes a shared vision for Texas that maximizes the value of the State's technology investment by identifying common areas of interest, using technology to advance agency missions, and preserving flexibility to innovate. Visit DIR at www.dir.state.tx.us

Grundfos Group Chooses IBM Information Server to Deliver Customer, Material and Supplier Information on Demand

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that Grundfos, one of the world's leading pump manufacturers for industrial purposes, heating, water supply and wastewater, has selected IBM Information Integration Solutions to create an integrated information management environment that delivers precise and trusted customer, material and supplier information to its business processes and SAP applications.

Grundfos is undertaking a comprehensive master data integration project to become more flexible and responsive to changing market conditions as demand increases. At the heart of this technology transformation is the new IBM Information Server, a first-of-a-kind software platform that will analyze, cleanse, transform and deliver trusted information for Grundfos, which runs one of the largest SAP R/3 implementations with more than 6,000 users across 40 companies in 25 countries.

"Our company relies upon accurate and trustworthy data, so in order to ensure we get the right order at the right time to the right customer, it is essential to have a single version of information to drive all our business transactions," said Karsten Sørensen, vice president, Information Service, Grundfos. "IBM Information Server enables us to take complex data from SAP and other data sources and make use of it throughout the organization while trusting its quality."

Represented by 73 companies in 41 countries, Grundfos Group depends upon the availability and reliability of all customers, material and supplier information across its worldwide network.

For example, Grundfos has three sales companies in Germany with different product groups and needs to seamlessly merge and share knowledge about common customers to capitalize on up- and cross-selling opportunities. Additionally, Grundfos needs to minimize the cost of maintaining three separate customer databases. Grundfos is using IBM Information Server to provide master data integration services for customer sales data, along with enabling similar initiatives for customer data quality, material data quality and supplier data quality throughout this master data project.

"Key business initiatives, such as the Grundfos's project to harmonize heterogeneous master data from SAP and other data sources, cannot succeed without effective information integration," said Pete Fiore, vice president, IBM Information Integration Solutions. "IBM Information Server is built from experience with more than 5,000 customers and allows organizations to turn complex, heterogeneous data into trusted information to drive new innovation, increase operational efficiency and lower risk."

IBM Information Server is currently available worldwide through IBM and IBM Business Partners.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com/software/data/integration/info_server/

Dell Sets New Standard In Systems Management

Dell today announced a series of moves to drive industry standards further into systems management architectures, resulting in new capabilities that can simplify and automate the administration of IT resources in the enterprise.

The company unveiled the Unified Manageability Architecture that provides a blueprint to standardize infrastructure management, a new console architecture in collaboration with systems management leader Altiris and new industry partnerships. Dell also announced that it is simplifying its existing portfolio of OpenManage tools.

"Dell is committed to simplifying the management of IT resources so customers can focus on what is most important to them – growing their business," said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Dell Product Group. "Today we’ve taken a tremendous leap forward in enterprise systems management. Thanks to our partnerships with Altiris, Microsoft, Novell and other industry leaders, customers get more control, choice and peace of mind in their enterprise IT environments."

Dell Provides Blueprint for Simplified Infrastructure Management
Dell's Unified Manageability Architecture (UMA) is a vision for a standards-based blueprint for simplified, modular systems management. UMA delivers a layered framework that enables a path to "built-in" management for hardware and software using standard instrumentation such as CIM and SMI-S, and access protocols including WS-Man. The result is a cross-vendor approach that can yield more robust systems modeling, enabling high availability and standards-based building blocks for business process management.

Dell is integrating the new architecture into its own products, including the Dell Remote Access Controller and Baseboard Management Controller for Dell PowerEdgeTM servers. Hardware, operating system and application partners such as AMD, Intel, Avocent, Broadcom, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and VMware have already adopted many of these standards.

Dell Delivers Two Paths for Integrated Systems Management
Dell's unique approach to systems management gives customers two paths to integrated enterprise systems management. For customers who value choice of tools and seamless integration, the company collaborates with partners to integrate software and hardware management on a single console using industry-standard protocols. This gives customers control of Dell hardware using leading systems management applications and can minimize the tools required to deploy, monitor and update their enterprise infrastructure while helping reduce cost and simplifying operations.

Dell and Altiris have extended their partnership to co-develop the next generation of OpenManage applications based on the Altiris platform for customers who want a single console from Dell that delivers increased hardware and software management. The company will also offer advanced management with "pay as you grow" upgrades, designed to enable increased control and choice compared to proprietary offerings. This adds functionality, not infrastructure, while helping eliminate the expensive "forklift" approach customers have had to manage in the past when upgrading to software management.

"Altiris and Dell have had a long-standing partnership to provide Dell customers with industry-leading hardware and software management solutions. In a logical extension of our work together, we are revolutionizing the systems management market by delivering an open and unified industry-standard management platform," Greg Butterfield, Altiris president and CEO, said. "Altiris service-oriented management is uniquely positioned to deliver heterogeneous hardware and software management that aligns business and IT through automated operations, enforceable security and IT lifecycle management."

The next generation of Dell OpenManage will also integrate critical functionality in areas such as operations, security and storage management, helping customers easily secure their corporate environments.

New Partner Program, Redesigned Portfolio Drive Functionality and Choice
To help customers avoid a single, high-cost proprietary management solution, the company is enabling more systems management applications to manage Dell hardware.

The Dell OpenManage Certified Partner Program provides systems management vendors with OpenManage developer toolkits that enable them to add integrated control of Dell hardware to their applications – resulting in new ways for customers to leverage their investments in existing systems management tools. When the hardware integration is complete, Dell engineers validate and certify the functionality with the company’s hardware. Certified partners are granted an OpenManage Certified Partner logo to affix to certified products.

This tight integration enables customers to simplify their software and hardware management needs from a single console. Customers can use their choice of application consoles such as Altiris’ service-oriented architecture, CA Unicenter Management, Microsoft System Management Server 2003 R2, Oracle Enterprise Manager, LANDesk management solutions and Novell ZENworks to manage Dell systems. Dell is also collaborating with virtualization management vendors to integrate that functionality as the technology continues to grow. Dell expects Certified Partner Program participants to adopt will adopt the standardized framework for systems management as described by the Unified Manageability Architecture.

Dell is also simplifying its OpenManage product suite by combining multiple point products into simplified, more comprehensive offerings. The first installment in the new set of offerings is the Dell Client Manager suite. Replacing three individual utilities, Dell Client Manager Standard includes client hardware inventory, monitoring and BIOS configuration. A snap-in upgrade, Dell Client Manager Plus provides software delivery, imaging, PC migration and software inventory. Future offerings from Dell will follow this format: basic hardware management available from Dell at no additional charge, with cost-effective upgrades to provide value-added features, including advanced management capabilities.

Industry Support for UMA and Certified Partner Program

UMA and Dell’s OpenManage Certified Partner Program have received broad support from industry leaders such as Intel, AMD, EMC, Novell and Microsoft, to name a few. To see what these and other vendors have to say about the program, visit www.dell.com/sysmgmtquotes For more information about OpenManage, visit www.dell.com/openmanage

Siemens wins major order for the further expansion of the power supply system – Order worth 700 million euros

As part of the further expansion of the power supply system in Qatar, Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution (PTD) has been awarded an order worth over 700 million euros by Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa). The order comprises the delivery of 25 turnkey substations of the voltage levels 220 kV, 132 kV and 66 kV and 11 kV, including transformers as well as station control and protection systems. In addition, it includes the expansion of 14 existing substations and the modification of ten more stations. All in all Siemens is delivering gas-insulated switchgear systems (GIS) with 54 switchbays for 220 kV and 200 switchbays for 132 kV/66 kV from its production plants in Berlin and Grenoble. The project is scheduled for completion by February 2009.

“For Siemens PTD, this is not only the largest order in the Group’s history. Furthermore this is a highly challenging project in which nearly all of our products and systems will be employed. It also extremely demanding in terms of project management since several substations will have to be constructed in parallel within a very short time,” said Dr. Udo Niehage, President of the Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution Group.

Siemens is implementing the order as part of the “Qatar Power Transmission System Expansion – Phase VII” project currently running in Qatar. The substations are to be built in the cities of Doha, Ras Laffan, Maesaeed and spread all over the country. This is not the first major order that Siemens PTD has received from Qatar in the course of the country’s ambitious project to expand its power supply system. Since November 2005, the company received several orders to a value of about 600 million euros for the delivery of turnkey transformer substations.

Within a few decades, Qatar has developed into a modern state with a high standard of living matched by growing energy requirements. The peninsula on the lower Gulf, with its abundant petroleum and natural gas reserves, posts double-digit economic growth rates and invests continuously in the country’s infrastructure.

MSFT: Microsoft Announces New Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Services Maria Martinez

Microsoft Corp. announced that Maria Martinez has been named corporate vice president of Worldwide Services, effective Jan. 5, 2007. Martinez will continue in her role as corporate vice president of the Communications Sector at Microsoft through the remainder of the calendar year. Martinez will work with Rick Devenuti, who recently announced his plans to retire from his role as senior vice president of Worldwide Services, as she transitions into her new role.

“Maria brings a strong track record to the services business of driving impressive results for the company,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer of Microsoft. “I have great confidence in her leadership and the team’s ability to continue our success in building our worldwide services business while successfully upholding our commitments to the partner channel.”

Martinez comes to the Microsoft® Worldwide Services organization from her current role as the corporate vice president of the Communications Sector. Microsoft’s Communications Sector works with service and content providers around the globe, addressing the specific needs of wireline and wireless telecommunications companies, cable operators, hosting service providers, and media and entertainment organizations.

Before joining Microsoft, Martinez served as CEO of a startup software vendor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before that, Martinez was a vice president at Motorola Inc.

Martinez has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, and a master’s degree in computer engineering from Ohio State University. Following college, Martinez worked for the prestigious Bell Laboratories for 12 years, developing and patenting disk storage systems and leading development of UNIX systems for symmetric multiprocessing and high availability.

MSFT: MSN Shopping Sees Record Traffic From Holiday Gift Buyers

Shoppers rang in the traditional start of the holiday gift-buying season with unprecedented traffic on MSN® Shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend.

From the day after Thanksgiving, known as “Black Friday” in the retail industry, through “Cyber Monday,” the unofficial kickoff of the online holiday shopping season, MSN Shopping (http://shopping.msn.com ) recorded 21 percent more visits compared with the same period in 2005. Site visits on “Cyber Monday” increased 63 percent from 2005 and consist of more than double the number visits to the site on “Black Friday” this year. Increase in traffic is believed to be due to MSN Shopping’s improved selection, handcrafted gift guides, popular Sales and Deals page, and tighter integration with MSN and Live Search

This year, visitors to MSN Shopping can consult an even broader selection of gift guides with recommendations for every person on their list, and save money with MSN Shopping online coupons. The site also offers expert buying advice provided by Consumer Reports and MSN’s own staff of editors to help shoppers find the best values.

“Gifts for Him,” “Gifts for Her,” and “Stocking Stuffers” were the popular MSN Shopping gift guides over the weekend. Jewelry, massagers, picture frames and beer-making equipment were among the most popular items. The most popular video game was “Madden NFL 07,” and the most popular toy was the Marshmallow Fun Company Marshmallow Shooter.

Also, MSN Shopping lets people compare more than 30 million products from over 8,000 stores to get the right gift at the lowest price. Shoppers could compare products from 26 percent more merchants this year than in 2005. The items that garnered the most price comparisons on “Cyber Monday” were the Garmin StreetPilot i3 GPS Receiver, The Marvel Comics Encyclopedia and Cannon PowerShot SD600 Digital ELPH. Shoppers’ top five most popular searches were for “Burt’s Bees,” “heart jewelry,” “Swarovski,” “Nintendo Wii,” and “hoodies.”

For online shoppers who begin their shopping with a Web search, MSN Shopping powers answers within Live.com. Shoppers can simply enter a term such as “digital cameras” or “perfume” in the Live Search tool to trigger instant answers that direct them to merchants featured on MSN Shopping.

“Online shoppers are always on the lookout for the perfect product, but they also want to find that item from the widest possible selection,” said Jim Barr, general manager for MSN Shopping at Microsoft. “Offering more than 30 million products from over 8,000 merchants in one place, MSN Shopping gives consumers the best of both worlds with easy access to our hand-picked collections, extensive reviews and comparison features that help them make sense of all of the choices we provide.”

IBM to Acquire Vallent

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has agreed to acquire Vallent Corporation, a privately held company based in Bellevue, Washington with more than 400 employees. Financial details were not disclosed. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and is anticipated to close in the first quarter of the 2007 calendar year.

Vallent is a leading supplier of network performance monitoring and service management software for wireless service providers worldwide. Vallent's software helps service providers manage the performance of their network infrastructure through monitoring and reporting problem areas such as dropped calls and traffic bottlenecks. It also helps operators improve wireless service quality and identify network problems before they impact a customer's experience.

The combination of Vallent's software and IBM's comprehensive management capabilities will enable service providers to deliver and manage end-to-end high quality services across wireline, wireless, IP and converged fixed/mobile network infrastructures. Adding Vallent to IBM Tivoli Software's Netcool portfolio creates a broad set of service assurance capabilities spanning fault, network performance and service quality management over a wide array of technologies and third-party equipment and applications. Vallent will augment IBM's ability to help communications service providers manage their networks as they deploy innovative new services while migrating from legacy to next generation infrastructures.

Vallent complements IBM's existing system and service management capabilities with deep wireless expertise and capabilities to address an even broader set of critical service management issues -- from handset and base stations to IP application servers. Through the addition of Vallent technology, IBM will be able to offer a more complete picture that enables operators to provide network performance, service and customer quality information to teams such as network operations, engineering, marketing, customer care, and other service stakeholders that need to know how a service is performing, who is affected by service issues and service level agreement (SLA) performance.

The acquisition of Vallent extends the Netcool operations support system portfolio acquired with Micromuse in February of 2006 and will further enhance IBM's ability to address the growing needs of its customers in this area, especially communications service providers.

"Today's service provider landscape is changing dramatically," said Al Zollar, General Manager, IBM Tivoli software. "Mergers, partnerships, and technology are making fixed-mobile convergence a reality. To compete, operators must manage the customer experience across large, heterogeneous, and complex service delivery infrastructures. The combination of Vallent and Netcool software will offer service providers an unparalleled set of network and service management tools with insight spanning from the IP core all the way to service quality as perceived by the end user."

IBM and Vallent will help service providers manage services efficiently while improving service quality, which can enable them to bring new services to market faster, reduce their operating expenses, and use service quality as a differentiating factor to attract and retain customers.

Vallent has more than 200 customers worldwide, including worldwide market leaders such as KPN, Bharti, China Mobile, and Brasil Telecom, as well as equipment providers such as Lucent, Motorola, and Alcatel.

"Service providers face tremendous competition and pressure to differentiate through rapid deployment of innovative, high quality services," said John Hansen, chief executive officer, Vallent. "With proven technology and extensive customer experience, Vallent and IBM can help clients manage their existing network environments while capitalizing on new services, next generation networks, continued growth in wireless connectivity, and fixed-mobile convergence."

Following completion of the acquisition, IBM's intent is to integrate Vallent into IBM's Software Group as a part of its Tivoli Software unit, the same unit into which the Netcool assets from IBM's February, 2006 Micromuse acquisition have been integrated.

ADSK: MapGuide Open Source and Autodesk Mark Record Downloads in First Year

Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today marked the one-year anniversary of the release of its MapGuide Open Source product and its feature data objects (FDO) source code. Over the past year, this web-mapping platform has gained traction among the geospatial developer community, which is now incorporating it into new and innovative spatial applications. The MapGuide Open Source community currently numbers over 600 members, and the source code has been downloaded more than 23,000 times. Additionally, the FDO source code has been downloaded 3000 times.


As part of its mission to deliver advanced technologies that help customers realize ideas, Autodesk released MapGuide Open Source and its FDO data access technology to the open source development community in November 2005. As more organizations adopt mapping applications, users want software that makes it easier to gather and publish geospatial information for purpose-specific business solutions, including engineering, construction, utilities and government.

"Open source is fueling unbelievable technology advances in the geospatial community, and we're proud to do our part to help that growth," said Gary Lang, vice president of Autodesk Infrastructure Solutions. "With MapGuide Open Source as part of the open source community, our customers benefit from more frequent product updates, including community-sponsored innovations, as well as a dramatically lower total cost of ownership."

Autodesk's MapGuide Open Source software supports the most popular geospatial file formats, databases and standards, simplifying map development and deployment. This critical interoperability, along with the open source code, facilitates easy and flexible analysis and distribution of geospatial information to key stakeholders. The FDO functionality within MapGuide Open Source provides access to multiple spatial data types.

OSGeo: Fostering geospatial collaboration

MapGuide Open Source is now an active project hosted by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). OSGeo, an independent not-for-profit entity, was established to support the needs of the open source geospatial community and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for cross-project collaboration. Under the umbrella of OSGeo, users, developers and community participants coordinate development efforts that are crucial to the success of open source web mapping.

"It's amazing to see the groundswell of interest and activity that has occurred during the past year," said Tyler Mitchell, executive director of OSGeo. "Autodesk's commitment to open source development methodologies has encouraged others in the open source geospatial community to start contributing. We are already starting to see new code contributions and application extensions that build upon the platform provided by Autodesk."

Yesterday at Autodesk University, more than 80 Autodesk MapGuide users and partners met in an open forum to share best practices and discuss the product roadmap. Members of OSGeo also showcased MapGuide Open Source applications under development.

"The open source development process allows me to influence the software's evolution by actively participating in the community," said Jason Birch, senior applications analyst for the city of Nanaimo, British Columbia and MapGuide Open Source user. "Additionally, the city's IT department gets earlier insight into product direction which helps us to plan strategically."

About Autodesk MapGuide and MapGuide Open Source

Applications built using the MapGuide Open Source platform give users a faster and more flexible way to query, analyze and view critical spatial information. In June, Autodesk launched Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, a commercial version of MapGuide Open Source, which includes additional support from Autodesk. Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise is certified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) as compliant with its WMS 1.1.1 specification.

ADSK: Williams-Sonoma Designs Its Future With Autodesk Inventor

Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today announced that Williams-Sonoma, Inc., one of the nation's premier specialty retailers of home furnishings, is using Autodesk Inventor software to increase the efficiency of its furniture manufacturing operations. While the company designs and engineers its furniture in the United States, it relies upon a global network of manufacturing vendors to fabricate the pieces. By incorporating Autodesk Inventor 3D models into its design processes, Williams-Sonoma is able to more effectively communicate to offshore vendors details as to what each finished product is supposed to look like, reducing the overall time required to develop new furniture products.


"Once we get a sketch from the design department, we can quickly and efficiently create a 3D visual appearance model using Autodesk Inventor," said Brad Bransen, manager of Furniture Engineering for Williams Sonoma Home. "The model provides a 3D visual representation of the designer's furniture concept. We wind up saving a lot of time. The more detail we can give our vendors up-front, the more accurately they're able to develop the finished product."

Historically, Williams-Sonoma used 2D drawings containing specs to communicate to its offshore vendors. Because of the inherent challenge of describing a three dimensional object with a two dimensional medium, there were often several iterations necessary to get the finished product in line with what the designers had originally envisioned.

Using Inventor to supplement the 2D spec sheets with 3D drawings helps Williams-Sonoma to greatly reduce the number of iterations with its vendors.

"We now have a high success rate for getting furniture samples built correctly on the first go-around, with minor modifications being necessary," commented Bransen. "We're saving up to two weeks in the sampling process and additional time in the overall manufacturing process, which means we're faster to market with our new product lines."

Moving forward, Williams-Sonoma intends to continue exploring the powerful Inventor functionality and learning new ways that Autodesk can help them effectively collaborate with their global network.

"In the age of global manufacturing, effective communication among partners and vendors isn't an option -- it's a necessity," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, vice president of Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions. "Williams-Sonoma is truly a leader in its field and is seeing the real business benefits of creating a universal 3D language between its partners."

About Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

Founded in 1956, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is the premier specialty retailer of home furnishings in the United States. Our brands are among the best known and most respected in the industry. We successfully market them through all three major channels -- retail stores, catalogs, and the Internet.

SUNW: Rush University Medical Center Deploys Sun Microsystems Infrastructure for Electronic Medical Records

Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: SUNW) today announced that Rush University Medical Center in Chicago has deployed a Sun technology infrastructure to run a critical new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. The Sun system, comprised of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), UltraSPARC IV+ processor-based Sun Fire servers and Sun StorageTek solutions, provides the rigorous high-availability environment required for the hospital's patient information system from Epic Systems Corporation. Rush University Medical Center, a leading teaching and research hospital, chose Sun over other vendors principally for the superior reliability and price/performance of the Sun Solaris 10 OS and UltraSPARC system.


The EMR system Rush University Medical Center is deploying from Epic captures all clinical, financial, and operational data related to a patient and organizes it into a consistent record accessible to users across the care continuum at the hospital. With a single, integrated record combining information from radiology, cardiology, surgery, labs, pharmacy and other departments, doctors are able to make more well-informed decisions about patient care. The Sun powered system also streamlines non-medical operations for the hospital, helping to improve the healthcare provider's financial performance and regulatory compliance.

"Rush University Medical Center is deeply committed to continuously improving patient care. That's why we made a major investment in upgrading our EMR system and why we entrusted the IT infrastructure to Sun," said Michael Sorensen, senior director of IT at Rush University Medical Center. "Sun's technology performance combined with the ability to provide a complete solution including operating system, servers, storage, support and professional services made it clear that Sun was the partner we wanted for this essential initiative."

Return on investment and upfront cost were also decisive factors. By taking advantage of Sun promotions, Rush University Medical Center received discounts of up to 50 percent on its hardware purchases. In addition, Rush University Medical Center will save significantly on operational costs over its previous mainframe environment.

"What Rush University Medical Center is doing to break down information silos and streamline data flow at the hospital is fundamental to the improvement of patient safety and the reduction of medical errors," said Joerg Schwarz, Director of healthcare & Life Sciences, Sun Microsystems. "But an excellent EMR system such as Epic needs a reliable and secure IT infrastructure to provide 24x7x365 service. Sun's highly available server and storage products help to ensure that an EMR system can operate at its full potential within the given IT budget, and thus delivers on the promise of better healthcare."

Building on decades of experience working with hospitals, clinics and insurers, Sun is leveraging its leading-edge technologies to create and deploy complete healthcare infrastructure solutions that help organizations to achieve secure health information exchange, cost-efficient data management, regulatory compliance and caregiver mobility. Sun healthcare solutions help reduce costs and medical errors while improving organizational efficiency and patient-centric care.

About Rush University Medical Center

Rush University Medical Center is an academic medical center that encompasses the more than 600 staffed-bed hospital (including Rush Children's Hospital), the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center and Rush University. Rush University, with more than 1,270 students, is home to one of the first medical schools in the Midwest, and one of the nation's top-ranked nursing colleges. Rush University also offers graduate programs in allied health and the basic sciences. Rush is noted for bringing together clinical care and research to address major health problems, including arthritis and orthopedic disorders, cancer, heart disease, mental illness, neurological disorders and diseases associated with aging. More information can be found on the Web at http://www.rush.edu

SUNW: Sun Microsystems Showcases Healthcare Solutions and Momentum at RSNA 2006

Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: SUNW) today announced that it is showcasing its advanced portfolio of healthcare industry solutions based on the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and other Sun server, software and storage technologies at the RSNA 2006 conference in Chicago this week. Sun today also announced new customer deployments at Karmanos Cancer Institute and Rush University Medical Center, demonstrating the range and depth of Sun technology for solving complex healthcare information management and archival challenges.


Building on decades of experience working with hospitals, clinics and insurers, Sun is leveraging its leading-edge technologies to create and deploy complete healthcare infrastructure solutions that help organizations to achieve secure health information exchange, cost-efficient data management, regulatory compliance and caregiver mobility. These solutions reduce costs and medical errors while improving efficiency and patient-centric care. Sun solutions featured at RSNA 2006 (McCormick Place, South Building, Hall A, Booth # 5554) include Sun technologies such as StorageTek 5800, SunRay and Sun Secure Global Desktop Software thin-client and mobility technologies, Sun Java technologies including Java Composite Application Platform Suite and Sun Java Identity Management Suite, as well as Sun Systems offerings.

Premier Hospitals Sign with Sun

Indicative of momentum for Sun solutions in the healthcare industry, the Karmanos Cancer Institute (KCI) in Detroit recently adopted a Sun StorageTek solution for its file-based clinical applications archive, which stores crucial patient data from a variety of hospital departments such as radiology and cardiology. KCI has been recognized as one of the 39 top cancer treatment centers in the United States by the National Cancer Institute. The Institute strives to prevent, detect and eradicate cancer, caring for more than 6000 new patients annually, and conducting more than 400 scientific investigations and clinical trials. The complete Sun archival system, which includes Sun StorageTek SAM-FS data-management software, a midrange SATA disk array and a tape library running on the Solaris OS, helps provide KCI physicians with easy and immediate access to patient records and medical imaging whenever it is needed.

"The Sun storage and retrieval system we are deploying at Karmanos is already improving our ability to make timely and accurate care-giving decisions by putting patient information at clinicians' fingertips in seconds," said Richard Doak, IT Technical Architect Manager, Karmanos Cancer Institute. "Beyond the healthcare benefits, the Sun system is cost-effective, dependable and flexible. Its tried and true design has been time-tested for 20 years, and its open architecture easily integrates with best-of-breed software and low-cost hardware, allowing us to expand its use over time throughout KCI."

In further evidence of its healthcare market momentum, Sun also announced Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center's deployment of a complete Sun infrastructure for its new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. The Sun system, comprised of UltraSPARC-based Sun Fire servers, Sun StorageTek solutions and the Solaris 10 OS, powers mission-critical patient information and financial applications at the renowned teaching hospital, to further improve their efficiency of delivering patient care and streamline operations.


"Sun's customer deployments are proof positive that Sun is extending its broad history in the healthcare marketplace and using our technology expertise to transform the healthcare system as a whole. Sun has more than 400 customers and more than 1000 heathcare sites where our solutions are powering the accessibility, liberation and integration of data trapped in disparate health IT systems," said Joerg Schwarz, director of Healthcare & Life Sciences, Sun Microsystems. "When medical information is better managed through its lifecycle, medical errors are reduced, costs associated with business and administration of healthcare services are cut, and processes are streamlined, maximizing the return on investment from IT budgets."

Sun Steps up OEM Partnerships

Sun is also driving momentum in the healthcare industry through its OEM program for Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) vendors. The program creates opportunities for healthcare informatics organizations to partner with Sun and develop solutions for providers, payers, regional and national healthcare organizations. Sun enables OEM partners to succeed by providing an expanded set of cost-effective, innovative platforms and solutions that support their delivery of high performance, differentiated products to the healthcare community. Sun's dedicated sales, pricing, supply chain and product support throughout the product lifecycle are some of the specialized OEM offerings for PACS vendors.

"Leading healthcare informatics vendors choose to team with Sun because we understand that a trusted OEM relationship involves more than just great technology," said Peter Ewens, vice president, OEM Group, Sun Microsystems. "Sun's standing in the healthcare industry and our shared dedication to the cause of improving healthcare has been integral in growing our OEM healthcare partner relationships.

For more information on Sun's healthcare solutions and OEM partner program, please visit: http://www.sun.com/solutions/landing/industry/health_care.xml

About Karmanos Cancer Institute

Based in midtown Detroit, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is committed to a future free of cancer. The Meyer L. Prentis Comprehensive Cancer Center of Metropolitan Detroit, operated by the Institute, is one of 39 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Caring for more than 6,000 new patients annually on a budget of $200 million, conducting more than 400 cancer-specific scientific investigation programs and clinical trials, the Institute is among the nation's best cancer centers. The Institute strives to prevent, detect and eradicate cancer through 1,200 staff including 300 faculty members supported by hundreds of volunteers and thousands of financial donors. More information can be found at http://www.karmanos.org

About Rush University Medical Center

Rush University Medical Center is an academic medical center that encompasses the more than 600 staffed-bed hospital (including Rush Children's Hospital), the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center and Rush University. Rush University, with more than 1,270 students, is home to one of the first medical schools in the Midwest, and one of the nation's top-ranked nursing colleges. Rush University also offers graduate programs in allied health and the basic sciences. Rush is noted for bringing together clinical care and research to address major health problems, including arthritis and orthopedic disorders, cancer, heart disease, mental illness, neurological disorders and diseases associated with aging. More information can be found on the Web at http://www.rush.edu

XRX: Experimental Xerox Paper Erases Itself, Results In Temporary Documents On Reusable Paper

Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) scientists have invented a way to make prints whose images last only a day, so that the paper can be used again and again. The technology, which is still in a preliminary state, blurs the line between paper documents and digital displays and could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in paper use.
The experimental printing technology, a collaboration between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.), could someday replace printed pages that are used for just a brief time before being discarded. Xerox estimates that as many as two out of every five pages printed in the office are for what it calls "daily" use, like e-mails, Web pages and reference materials that have been printed for a single viewing.

"Despite our reliance on computers to share and process information, there is still a strong dependence on the printed page for reading and absorbing content. Of course, we'd all like to use less paper, but we know from talking with customers that many people still prefer to work with information on paper. Self-erasing documents for short-term use offers the best of both worlds," said Paul Smith, manager of XRCC's new materials design and synthesis lab.

Xerox has filed for patents on the technology, which it calls "erasable paper." It is currently part of a laboratory project that focuses on the concept of future dynamic documents.

To develop erasable paper, researchers needed to identify ways to create temporary images. The "a-ha" moment came from developing compounds that change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light but then will gradually disappear. In its present version, the paper self-erases in about 16-24 hours and can be used multiple times.

While scientists at XRCC work on the chemistry of the technology, their counterparts at PARC - the birthplace of the laser printer - are investigating ways to build a device that could write the image onto the special paper. PARC researchers developed a prototype "printer" that creates the image on the paper using a light bar that provides a specific wavelength of light as a writing source. The written image fades naturally over time or can be immediately erased by exposing it to heat.

While potential users have shown interest in transient documents, there is still much to be done if the technology is to be commercialized. "This will remain a research project for some time," said Eric Shrader, PARC area manager, industrial inkjet systems. "Our experiments prove that it can be done, and that is the first step, but not the only one, to developing a system that is commercially viable."

Temporary documents are part of Xerox's ongoing investments in sustainable innovation - or "green products" - that deliver measurable benefits to the environment, such as solid ink printing technology, which generates 90 percent less waste than comparable laser printers; more energy-efficient printers, copiers and multifunction devices; and other paper-saving innovations.

The Xerox Innovation Group conducts work in color science, computing, digital imaging, work practices, electromechanical systems, novel materials, linguistics, work practice analysis, and nanotechnology connected to Xerox's expertise in printing and document management.

PARC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox. It consistently creates value through its inventions and innovations by embedding them in the products, solutions and services of its strategic sponsors, using them as the foundation for creating new businesses, or licensing them to technology customers.

VRSN: VeriSign Confirms Reasons for Expected Restatement of Previously Issued Financial Statements

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) announced on November 21, 2006 that it has determined the need to restate its historical financial statements for the years and interim periods from 2001-2005 and for the first quarter of 2006 to record additional non-cash, stock-based compensation expense related to past stock option grants.

VeriSign confirmed today that the reasons for this determination are that it has identified certain grants with incorrect measurement dates, without required documentation, or with initial grant dates and prices that were subsequently modified. Based on the findings to date, the non-cash charge to the financial statements for the periods 2001 - 2005 is not expected to exceed $250 million; however, the investigation is still on-going.

VRSN: VeriSign To Acquire inCode Wireless

VeriSign, Inc., (NASDAQ: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure for the networked world, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire inCode Wireless, a global business and technology consulting firm.

“With a focus on next generation mobility solutions, inCode professionals have a firm grasp of all aspects of the wireless marketplace – from business strategy to emerging trends,” said Stratton Sclavos, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of VeriSign. “Combined with VeriSign’s market-leading portfolio of managed communications and content offerings, we plan to offer end-to-end solutions that enable our customers to launch compelling services that drive new revenue streams and improve customer loyalty.”

inCode has become a global force in wireless business and technology consulting, with 14 offices in 10 countries. The company provides strategy consulting services to nearly every major wireless, wireline, cable operator and telecom equipment manufacturer, as well as leading enterprises.

“By joining VeriSign, inCode is able to take our renowned industry thought leadership to the next level,” said John Donovan, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of inCode. “VeriSign’s strength in communications solutions and our global consulting teams will help customers accelerate their transformation to a next generation digital world.”

The acquisition purchase price is approximately $52 million and is being accounted for as a purchase transaction. Additional information will be provided following the closing of the transaction; however, revenue and earnings contributions from the acquisition will not be material to VeriSign’s 2006 financial results.

Iowa Health System Collaborates With IBM to Improve Access to Medical Data

Iowa Health System (IHS) today announced it will utilize IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) to allow cardiology, radiology and other digital images to be shared across multiple sites and securely stored for years to help improve patient care, advance research and reduce administrative costs.

Working with IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Bycast, Inc., IHS will establish an enterprise-wide storage system, based on IBM GMAS to address the exponential growth of IHS' imaging and other fixed content data, such as audio, video and medical documents. Fast, reliable solutions like GMAS will help IHS clinicians gain 24X7 access to medical data so they can respond quickly to changing patient conditions. And, with this new solution, IHS will be able to cost effectively establish baseline technologies and enable Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) applications and other systems to more readily access medical images, scans and other documents.

"Providing our patients with the best possible healthcare, while controlling costs, is a top priority for IHS," said Jim Mormann, CIO, Iowa Health System. "In order to manage our existing 13TB PACS, that is expected to double in size over the next year, we turned to IBM and its industry standard grid solution to give us the scalability and a secure, high availability archive at significantly lower operational costs than our previous solution."

By implementing GMAS, which is a key component of IBM's Information Lifecycle Management Infrastructure Solution Portfolio for Healthcare, IHS will be able to easily deploy a disaster recovery plan over a wide area network, maintain business continuance by allowing clinical applications to operate in the presence of faults and verify authenticity of retrieved data, auto-rebuild corrupted data.

"Customers like Iowa Health System are utilizing innovative technology to help deliver improved patient centric care," said Bruce Gardner, director, IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences. "A solution such as IBM GMAS can help reduce the complexity and cost of managing medical images and data so clinicians can effectively and efficiently access patient information."

IBM GMAS utilizes Bycast StorageGRID Software and integrates IBM System Storage DS4000, IBM System Storage EXP100 Expansion Unit and xSeries servers. Both single and multiple rack configurations are available for additional secure disaster recovery and to support affordable entry and expansion as healthcare providers' needs change.

IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution, which is part of IBM's broader Grid solution offerings, incorporates open standard grid technology and joins the IBM portfolio of archive solutions that includes IBM System Storage DR550, IBM System Storage Archive Manager, the recently announced "E-mail Archiving and Storage Solution" and IBM WORM tape offerings, usable to address regulatory compliance and resiliency requirements for long-term healthcare data retention.

About Iowa Health System

Initially formed in 1995, Iowa Health System today includes 11 hospitals in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Dubuque, Fort Dodge, Sioux City, Waterloo and the Quad Cities, along with a group of nearly 354 physicians and 125 clinics in more than 30 communities in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and South Dakota. Iowa Health System is the first and largest integrated healthcare system in Iowa with revenues of more than $1.7 billion. For more information visit: www.ihs.org

About Bycast

Bycast is a leading provider of software solutions to simplify the management of massive fixed-content storage systems. For more information visit www.bycast.com


For more information about IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences visit: www.ibm.com/industries/healthcare

CSCO: Cisco Small & Medium Business Partners Continue to Accelerate

Cisco® demonstrated the continued success of its SMB Select Partner program by announcing at the Cisco European Channel and SMB Press Forum in Milan that it had doubled its number of partners in Europe to more than 2,300 members this year. Cisco also announced two new initiatives, the Unified Communications Accelerator Program and SMB University, which will deliver 5,000 days of free instructor-led training to Cisco partners. The improved program has been introduced to address the increasing need for skilled partners specialising in providing security, wireless and especially voice solutions to small and medium-sized businesses.

Launched in 2004, the Cisco SMB Select Partner program offers incentives and resources specifically geared to support partners who provide a valuable service to organisations of between 20 and 249 employees. SMB University is being launched across all of Europe to provide free instructor-led training, and the Unified Communications Accelerator Program has been developed to address a growing demand for Unified Communications technologies.

"The lack of skilled staff for partners and even at their customers is a major issue today, and Cisco has gone a long way in helping its SMB Select Partners train their staffs in addressing technologies such as wireless, security and Unified Communications," says Keith Humphries, managing consultant for EuroLan. "SMB customers look for solutions and not products, and Cisco's SMB Select Partner program allows partners to become skilled in selling more solutions, becoming their trusted advisor and relieving them of their pain points."

SMB University has been running in Latin America for the past eight months, developing a breadth of skills among SMB-focussed partners. As a result of its success, the expert training is rolling out across 21 countries in Europe. Primarily an instructor-led initiative with updates and refresher training provided online, it offers daylong courses with both foundation and technology-focussed sessions on security, wireless and Unified Communications. All training is free of charge to SMB Select Partners. Cisco's SMB University also help partners by providing training in the general sales skills needed to sell technology to SMBs.

As small and medium-sized businesses continue to demand integrated voice and data networks, which enable the deployment of smart, simple and highly secure solutions that help improve customer responsiveness, the Unified Communications Accelerator Program will provide comprehensive free training focussed on voice. The program offers SMB Select Partners four days of instructor-led training focussed exclusively on Unified Communications technologies. Two days of the program focus on training in sales, and the remaining two provide hands-on technical training.

Cisco also announced details of its first global SMB Select Partner survey. More than 1,200 European partners participated in the research that highlights the considerable value of Cisco's SMB-focussed partner program. Eighty nine per cent of the European respondents stated that the SMB Select Partner Program was either important or very important to them. The research also highlighted that Cisco's partners believe that quality support services and a strong knowledge of a customer's business are the two main factors in ensuring customer loyalty among small businesses.

"The adoption of the SMB Select Partner program by our partners has been incredible, and it continues to flourish. This is an increasing part of our business and we need to ensure that our customers can easily address their technology needs. As we see demand for wireless, security and especially voice solutions flourish, our aim is to ensure that the SMB Select Partner program continues to evolve alongside this growing trend," said Andreas Dohmen, vice president of European Channels, Cisco.

The Unified Communications Accelerator Program is available now in UK and the Netherlands and will be introduced across the rest of Europe in the coming six months. SMB University will start providing training to partners this December.

IBM Expands Global Delivery Capabilities to Inland China

IBM (NYSE: IBM) signed an agreement today with the Chengdu High-Tech Zone, to establish a Global Delivery Center within the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park. Scheduled to be operational by February 2007, this new center will provide multi-lingual application development and maintenance services to clients globally in English, Japanese and Chinese, and to the IBM Global Procurement Center, recently located to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

"As part of our transformation to becoming a globally integrated business, IBM is focused on amassing the right skills and expertise where they exist to deliver the right services to our clients. The presence of a vast talent pool, technical capabilities and business friendly economic policies make China one of our key locations to deliver world-class services to clients around the world," said Frank Kern, General Manager, IBM Asia Pacific.

The new center at Chengdu further strengthens IBM's existing network of global delivery centers in China across Shenzhen, Dalian and Shanghai. Established since 1999, China Global Delivery Services has been assessed at SEI CMMI Maturity Level 5, the highest in the industry, providing support to clients in America, Europe and Northeast Asia. IBM also plans to aggressively grow the scope of services according to client needs. The globally benchmarked Chengdu center will have local talent working with highly-trained staff from other parts of China and from IBM operations around the world.

Henry Chow, Chairman and CEO of IBM Greater China, said, "The expansion of IBM's Global Delivery Center network to Chengdu is a testament to our commitment to the talent and opportunities we see here."

Henry Chow further added, "The emerging opportunities in western China will enable IBM to further strengthen our global delivery network in China. We look forward to working with our local partners from government, academia and business to see these opportunities to fruition."

The capital of Sichuan Province, Chengdu, boasts a population of 12.2 million(1). Chengdu is also home to a large number of highly-trained IT professionals, providing a strong pool of talent for the IBM Global Delivery Center. IBM has further committed to work with local universities and government bodies to ensure key skills, such as languages are developed locally.

IBM established the Chengdu branch office in 1996. The product and services have expanded rapidly in the last ten years for Chinese domestic clients covering across public, finance, telecom, distribution and industrial sectors.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com/services

(1)ChengDu government Chinese site: http://www.cdstats.chengdu.gov.cn/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=1677

ORCL: Oracle Delivers Oracle Production Scheduling and Oracle Strategic Network Optimization

Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle(r) Production Scheduling and Oracle Strategic Network Optimization. By integrating capabilities from Oracle's JD Edwards and PeopleSoft Supply Chain Planning suite with Oracle's Supply Chain Management applications, manufacturing companies can optimize supply and distribution networks, mitigate risk, maximize shop floor throughput and dramatically reduce supply chain costs.
"As a valued end user of the Oracle Advanced Planning solution, we are looking forward to a rapid deployment of Oracle Production Scheduling," said Teva Pharmaceuticals Vice President, BPI Peter Billiaert. "As an experienced user of Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning, we're excited about Oracle's integrated offering of a truly best in class manufacturing planning, scheduling and execution solution, to drive our company to an even higher level of performance that will benefit our customers in terms of on-time delivery."

Customers can now leverage Oracle Strategic Network Optimization to simulate supply chain risk, develop long-range plans and create holistic supply strategies. Companies can analyze "what-if" scenarios - such as the effects of opening or closing a distribution center, adding a new supply source, fuel cost increases, and unplanned disasters - to detect the vulnerabilities in their supply networks. As a result, pre-emptive measures can be established to overcome challenges that may arise and mitigate risks. Additionally, with Oracle Strategic Network Optimization, customers are better equipped to address the challenges of globalization by comparing potential business scenarios such as rationalization strategies, effects of mergers and acquisitions, impact of currency fluctuations, cost of outsourcing and new transportation contracts. As a result, companies are able to make more informed, profitable business decisions.

Oracle Production Scheduling helps manufacturers to optimize process, semiconductor and discrete manufacturing shop floor operations through out-of-the-box integration with Oracle Discrete Manufacturing, Oracle Process Manufacturing, and Oracle Shop Floor Management. Customers can create highly detailed shop floor schedules that automatically detect floating bottlenecks, simulate corrective actions and measure shop floor performance improvements. This gives companies the ability to pre-empt supply chain disruptions and maximize shop-floor efficiency and throughput while minimizing cost.

"The unique capabilities that the acquired and quickly integrated scheduling product provides, such as campaign run optimization, advanced sequence dependent set-up optimization, embedded performance management and a real-time interactive scheduling board designed by schedulers for schedulers, will enable us to maximize our plant throughput at optimal resource utilization without any concerns of ongoing data mappings and integrations," said Billiaert.

"Companies competing in the global market place are exposed to risk at every point in their supply chain," said Oracle Vice President Advanced Planning Products Nadeem Syed. "By integrating functionality from the JD Edwards and PeopleSoft Supply Chain Planning suite with the Oracle E-Business Suite, we are providing customers with comprehensive tools to develop end-to-end supply chain plans that account for any number of scenarios."

Oracle Production Scheduling and Oracle Strategic Network Optimization are currently available and can be leveraged as part of the Oracle E-Business Suite or as a stand-alone product.

Customers looking for more information on Oracle Applications are encouraged to attend one of the 1000 events that are being held around the world as part of the Oracle Applications World Tour. These events are designed to communicate the Oracle Application strategy and product roadmaps. Please visit the World Tour website for more information, at www.oracle.com/worldtour

HPQ: ProCurve Networking by HP Climbs to No. 2 in Enterprise Networking Revenue and Ports

ProCurve Networking by HP is now the world’s second largest global enterprise networking vendor in revenue, ports and Power over Ethernet (PoE), according to a recent report by market research firm Dell’Oro Group.(1)

For the third calendar quarter of 2006, ProCurve grew its revenue share by 15.5 percent quarter-over-quarter and increased its overall port shipments by 20.4 percent sequentially. Both figures are higher than industry growth rates for the respective areas.

Dell’Oro Group also identified ProCurve as the fastest growing networking vendor in Layer 2 through Layer 7 total ports, and PoE.

“ProCurve sets itself apart from the industry by focusing on five key areas: advanced and differentiated solutions, ease of use, reliability, security, and open standards with interoperability,” said John McHugh, vice president and general manager, ProCurve Networking by HP. “That we have surpassed the competition to take over as the second largest networking vendor in total revenue share is yet another validation that the market recognizes ProCurve’s commitment to providing networks that enhance security, increase productivity and reduce complexity.”

The Dell’Oro Group report, which examined the overall Ethernet switch market for the third calendar quarter of 2006, showed that ProCurve increased its overall port share to 8.4 percent of the market and increased PoE shipments 82.5 percent compared to the industry growth rate of 24.5 percent.

For the period, ProCurve’s port market share in Europe, Middle East and Africa grew 35 percent sequentially, giving ProCurve nearly 16.4 percent port share in the region.

With more than 25 years of experience, ProCurve offers customers standards-based, highly reliable and advanced technology solutions that include an industry-leading lifetime warranty featuring next-day replacement, free telephone and email support, and free software updates for as long as a customer owns the product.

About ProCurve Networking by HP

The ProCurve Networking business unit of HP delivers enterprise networking solutions comprising wired and wireless LAN and WAN networking products, services and solutions. Recognizing the necessary migration of intelligence and functionality to the network edge, the ProCurve Adaptive EDGE Architecture strategy is the industry’s only comprehensive and inclusive network design strategy that is adaptable, scalable and completely interoperable for achieving command from the center with control to the network edge. ProCurve was positioned in the challenger quadrant in research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.’s 2006 Magic Quadrant Report for Global Campus LANs.

Further information on ProCurve networking solutions and products is available at www.procurve.com


(1) Dell’Oro Group, Q306 Ethernet Switch Quarterly Report, November 14, 2006.

IBM Agrees to Resolve Claims of Rosenburg, et al. v. IBM

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that it has agreed to resolve all claims in Rosenburg, et al. v. IBM, Case No. C-06-0430, an overtime pay class action lawsuit filed in federal district court in the Northern District of California in January 2006.


This case focused on certain current and former IBM employees within IBM’s Technical Services Professional and Information Technology Specialist job categories, alleging, among other things, that those employees were classified as exempt from overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act and certain state laws, and that they should have been classified as non-exempt and paid overtime compensation. Under the terms of the settlement, still subject to final approval by the Court, each qualified individual in these two job categories will be entitled to apply for a payment, in accordance with an agreed formula, in full and complete settlement of all claims in the case.

Litigation of this case would have been lengthy, burdensome and expensive, and IBM chose to resolve it, without admitting any wrongdoing or liability, for a total of $65 million. IBM had established a provision for the probable settlement of this case in the third quarter of this year.

IBM states that during its 90-year history as a major employer in the U.S., it has a long-standing and proven track record in accurately and appropriately paying many hundreds of thousands of employees. IBM continues to believe that its payment practices are fair and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

MSFT: Microsoft Statement on Completion of the Initial European Commission Review of Microsoft’s Technical Documents

In accordance with the March 2004 decision by the European Commission, Microsoft submitted 8,500 pages of detailed technical documentation in July 2006. The Commission has now completed its initial review of this extensive documentation. The documentation is now available for review by any potential licensees. Microsoft is committed to full compliance with the March 2004 decision.

In the wake of the completion of the Commission’s initial review of Microsoft’s documentation, the company issued the following brief statement:

"This is another important step in the process. The Trustee and Microsoft have now completed the technical review and edits to the more than 100 documents, totalling 8,500 pages, that we submitted in July of this year, in accordance with the deadline established by the Commission. We are pleased that the Commission has recognized our efforts to comply with our documentation obligations, and we will continue to work closely with the Commission and the Trustee to ensure that we are in full compliance with every aspect of the Commission’s decision.

The submission of technical documentation in July, and the revision process since then, has been an unprecedented undertaking involving over 300 engineers and technical writers at Microsoft.

The Trustee’s team of 7 technical experts has worked tirelessly over the past four months to give us feedback on the enormous volume of technical documentation that we submitted in July, and we have incorporated their input into the documents.

The next phase in the process, established by the Commission, is that the documentation is now available for review by any potential licensee, and we look forward to receiving feedback from the industry."

SUNW: Sun Gains Server Market Share for Third Consecutive Quarter in Analyst Report

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) saw its year-to-year total server market share grow 1.1 points, the most of any top six server vendor, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, which was released today. It was the third consecutive quarter that Sun’s market share grew.


Sun's saw its year-to-year total server revenue grow at 15.8%, more than double the growth of its closest competitor.

Sun's growth was driven by the success of its Sun Fire servers, both UltraSPARC and x64, and by customers continuing to embrace the Solaris 10 operating system. The company won new customers in high performance computing and web tier deployments, as well as securing traditional ERP, CRM, data warehousing and database deployments.

Sun outperformed its competitors in key areas:

• Sun's market share grew while HP lost 1.5 points in the overall factory revenue server market share.
  
• In the Unix segment, Sun grew factory revenue market share by 3.6 points while HP lost 5 points of share.
  
• Also noteworthy was IBM losing .2 points of unit market share in the overall server market.

"We're outgrowing the competition because we have the industry's best, most complete server line-up and no one comes close to matching Solaris 10," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Sun's systems group. "The way we'll continue to grow is simple: focus on working with customers for whom network computing is a vital competitive differentiator, and deliver innovative products that give them an edge in the marketplace."

Report: IBM #1 in Global Server Revenue, Blades and UNIX in 3Q 2006

Gartner, Inc. today announced that IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the leader in world-wide server revenue, increasing its share of global server revenue to 33.7 percent in the third quarter of 2006 from 32.7 percent the previous year.(1)
This growth was driven by its continued leadership in the highly strategic mainframe and blade segments, as well as the impact of the POWER 5+™ architecture in the UNIX® space, according to IBM.
IBM led in blade server revenue share for the tenth consecutive quarter with 43.9 percent of the revenue and 38.0 percent of volume. During the quarter, IBM widened its leadership position over its nearest competitor, believed to be fueled by IBM's introduction of the "Cool Blue" power management technologies and the launch of AMD Opteron™ processor-based blades.

The report also showed IBM led in UNIX servers, growing its revenue share 3.2 points year-over-year to 32.9 percent. IBM showed particularly strong growth in the RISC-Itanium segment of UNIX sales, increasing its revenue share from 30.9 percent in the third quarter of 2005 to 34.4 percent in the third quarter of 2006.

"The completion of the transition to POWER 5+ servers in the third quarter gave customers access to IBM systems that combine immense power with the ability to create virtualized environments," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM System p. "This translated into a significant competitive advantage for IBM, allowing us to capitalize on customers' increasing interest in using virtualization to consolidate disparate environments, thereby improving datacenter efficiency and reducing overall costs."


(1.) Gartner Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide: Database, issued on November 21, 2006

DARPA Selects IBM for Supercomputing Grand Challenge

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded IBM (NYSE: IBM) a four-year $244 million award to develop a machine that provides 100 times the sustained performance of today's general purpose supercomputers and is dramatically simpler to program, administer and use. IBM expects the project to support DARPA's goals of increasing productivity and enabling the United States to achieve long-term technological leadership while opening up the complex world of supercomputing to a broader audience of scientists and businesses.

The DARPA award will substantially increase research and development activities into mainline IBM technologies planned to be delivered in 2010 and beyond, such as an upcoming generation of the POWER processor (POWER7), the AIX® operating system, IBM's General Parallel File System, IBM's Parallel Environment, and IBM's Interconnect and Storage Subsystems -- technologies that are key to IBM's commercial product portfolio.

"IBM, DARPA and the mission partners will collaborate to develop a powerful and innovative design that will enhance the ability of supercomputers to help government, businesses and individuals," said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "We believe this new system will accelerate scientific breakthroughs, improve our nation's competitiveness and create new market opportunities."

A Holistic Approach to Petascale Computing

One of the most significant barriers to sustained performance of more than a thousand trillion calculations per second -- called petascale computing -- is achieving the scalability of the hardware and software across a broad set of existing applications. The goal of the technologies delivered under this contract is to allow a wide spectrum of current applications and programming styles to cross the multi-petascale barrier in sustained performance. In addition, IBM's system architecture and design approach will enable a rapidly increasing number of programmers and developers to achieve high productivity for small scale and petascale systems.

Developing computing systems that are more usable by the national security community, science and industry is a key part of DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) mission -- an area of high performance computing which has historically been under-addressed. IBM will tackle this productivity challenge through an end-to-end holistic approach to advanced system architecture and design as well as software development in the following areas: operating systems, programming models, compilers, libraries, file systems, application development tools, performance tools, systems and data management, and serviceability.

Initiated in 2002, the DARPA HPCS program responds to a strategy developed in conjunction with the U.S. national security community. The new IBM system design will help fulfill the goals of DARPA's HPCS program, which include enhancing human productivity as well as improving computer performance, scalability and availability. Today's award represents Phase III of the DARPA program. IBM plans to continue its collaboration with numerous universities and national laboratories throughout the development process of these advanced technologies.

"IBM's next generation POWER7 based petascale computing system will open many new realms in science and engineering -- from predicting the structure and function of complex biological systems, to realizing the potential of nanotechnology, to predicting the changes in the earth's climate and ecosystems," says Thom Dunning, director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). "This deep integration of IBM's most advanced technologies will place unsurpassed computational power into the hands of researchers and educators through an elegant architecture and comprehensive software environment that emphasizes productivity, reliability and high sustained performance at all computational scales."

"NCSA looks forward to working with IBM to bring the full potential of its planned POWER7 based system to bear on the nation's most challenging science and engineering problems," says Robert Pennington, chief technology officer at NCSA. "Engaging with industrial partners to explore and develop applications of petascale levels will strengthen the US economy and enhance our competitiveness in a world driven by science and technology innovation."

"These DARPA initiatives will propel IBM to far exceed the traditional 2X performance improvement over 18 months," said Ravi Arimilli, IBM Fellow and Principal Investigator of POWER7. "We are embarking on a bold journey to deliver a 100X improvement in sustained performance over 48 months with a simpler and easy to use platform. Harnessing the development capabilities of IBM towards this disruptive design will drive the frontiers of science and business."



About DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.

VRSN: VeriSign Announces Expected Restatement of Previously Issued Financial Statements

As previously announced by VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), an ad hoc group of independent Directors of VeriSign’s Board of Directors has been reviewing VeriSign’s historical stock option grant practices. Although the review is not complete, on November 15, 2006, the Board concluded that the company must restate its historical financial statements for the years and interim periods from 2001-2005 and for the first quarter of 2006 to record additional non-cash, stock-based compensation expense related to past stock option grants having incorrect measurement dates and other administrative inconsistencies related to certain stock option grant dates and prices. Based on the findings to date, the non-cash charge to the financial statements for the periods 2001 - 2005 is not expected to exceed $250 million, however the investigation is still on-going.

Accordingly, the financial statements and all earnings press releases and similar communications issued by the company relating to those periods should not be relied upon pending completion of the restatements. The amount of additional non-cash stock-based compensation expense to be recorded in any specific period or in any future period and the resulting tax and accounting impact have not been determined.

The ad hoc group of independent Directors anticipates its review of VeriSign's historical stock option grant practices will be completed by the end of the year. As soon as practicable following the completion of the review, VeriSign intends to prepare restated financial statements for all affected periods and thereafter become current on the filing of its periodic reports required under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. VeriSign is evaluating the impact of this matter on its internal controls over financial reporting and on its disclosure controls and procedures.

VeriSign has discussed the above matters with KPMG LLP, the company's independent registered public accounting firm.

SUNW: Sun Announces Support For Sun StorageTek 5800 Storage System in the KODAK CARESTREAM Solution

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) today announced that Kodak will offer the Sun StorageTek 5800 storage system as an integrated storage option for its CARESTREAM Information Management Solutions. By making its Versatile Intelligent Patient Archive (VIParchive) software available with the StorageTek 5800 system, Kodak's CARESTREAM Solution will offer radiologists and healthcare IT managers a new storage option that improves reliability and performance, while helping to lower costs. The StorageTek 5800 storage system also exploits the power and reliability of its embedded Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), the most advanced OS on the planet.


According to Michael W. Jackman, General Manager, Healthcare Information Solutions, and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company, "The Sun StorageTek 5800 system is one of the most interesting storage solutions to come along in years. Some of the features that we are working on with Sun really complement our CARESTREAM Solutions and allow us to better address new requirements we are hearing from customers."

As the world's first Application-Aware Programmable Storage solution, the StorageTek 5800 system, formerly known as Project Honeycomb, blurs the lines between application server and storage, giving application developers new flexibility in the way their applications are deployed. By off-loading selected data services from the application server, the system can help improve the overall application price/performance while helping to lower cost and complexity. Examples of these services include metadata management, database queries, and custom services such as image resizing. By moving portions of the application to the data, rather than moving data to the application, picture archive and communication system (PACS) providers can deliver a more flexible, higher reliability solution.

The StorageTek 5800 system will also help healthcare customers more easily manage their study archives by scaling capacity and performance horizontally without disrupting applications and users. Use of advanced reliability algorithms also enables the system to heal itself from multiple simultaneous component failures without the need for immediate servicing.

"The Sun StorageTek 5800 system delivers substantial storage innovation by leveraging the breadth and depth of Sun's technology portfolio, including the Solaris 10 OS and Sun Fire x64 servers," said David Yen, executive vice president, Storage Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Healthcare is an ideal match for the StorageTek 5800's capabilities -- PACS scale requirements and regulatory issues place it at the leading edge of content management applications. We are committed to enabling our healthcare partners and OEMs, including Kodak, to build data management solutions that fully address customer requirements."

Sun's OEM program for healthcare creates opportunities for partners to develop solutions for providers, payers, regional and national healthcare organizations. Sun provides OEM partners with an expanded set of cost-effective, innovative platforms and technologies that support delivery of high-performance, differentiated solutions, such as Kodak's CARESTREAM Information Management solution.

The StorageTek 5800 storage system is expected to be available for deployment in KODAK CARESTREAM Information Management Solutions in Spring 2007 and will be on display at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Conference in Chicago, November 26 – December 1, 2006 at McCormick Place, South Building, Hall A #3700. More information on the StorageTek 5800 system is available by contacting honeycomb@sun.com. More information on Kodak's CARESTREAM Information Management Solution is available at: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/health/productsByType/pacs/storageProduct.jhtml?pq-path=5839#csol

Siemens wins major order worth 700 million euros from Qatar for the further expansion and modification of the power supply system

As part of the further expansion of the power supply system in Qatar, Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution (PTD) has been awarded a large order worth over 700 million euros by Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa). For Siemens PTD, this is the largest order in the Group’s history. The order comprises the delivery of 25 turnkey substations, the expansion of 14 existing substations and the modification of ten more. The project is scheduled for completion by February 2009.
“For Siemens PTD, this is not only the largest order in the Group’s history. Furthermore this is a highly challenging project in which nearly all of our products and systems will be employed. It also extremely demanding in terms of project management since several substations will have to be constructed in parallel within a very short time,” said Dr. Udo Niehage, President of the Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution Group (PTD).

Siemens is implementing the order as part of the “Qatar Power Transmission System Expansion – Phase VII” project currently running in Qatar. The substations are to be built in the cities of Doha, Ras Laffan, Maesaeed and spread all over the country.

This is not the first major order that Siemens PTD has received from Qatar in the course of the country’s ambitious project to expand its power supply system. Since November 2005, the company received several orders to a value of about 600 million euros for the delivery of turnkey transformer substations.

Within a few decades, Qatar has developed into a modern state with a high standard of living matched by growing energy requirements. The peninsula on the Persian Gulf, with its abundant petroleum and natural gas reserves, posts double-digit economic growth rates and invests continuously in the country’s infrastructure.

Siemens: All details settled for takeover of Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch Cartel authorities give the go-ahead

Siemens today closed the purchase of Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch (KK&K), a stock corporation headquartered in Frankenthal, Germany. The cartel authorities responsible had previously completed their investigation and cleared the way for takeover without making it subject to any conditions. KK&K is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG. The KK&K Group, which employs a workforce of 1,400, posted sales of about EUR270 million in fiscal 2005.

Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch develops, manufactures and sells steam turbines with a capacity of up to five megawatts (MW), as well as compressors and fans for industrial applications. The company has locations in Germany in Frankenthal, Bad Hersfeld, Zweibrücken and Leipzig, and in Helsingör, Denmark.

With this takeover, Siemens Power Generation (PG) is expanding its portfolio at the lower end of the power range in the industrial applications market segment. It now has a portfolio of industrial steam turbines ranging from 45 KW to 180 MW. As far as compressors are concerned, the company can now also supply a wide spectrum of small standard machines as well as large process gas compressors.

“The products and services of PG and KK&K fit together excellently,” said Klaus Voges, President of the Siemens Power Generation Group. “This takeover fills the gaps in our portfolio in the lower power range. At the same time, KK&K opens up additional growth opportunities for us in the service business and in some attractive niche markets such as drinking water purification and sewage treatment,” Voges added.

IBM Internet Security Systems Expands Desktop Protection with Additional Antivirus and Anti-Spyware Features

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has incorporated additional features for antivirus and anti-spyware into its Internet Security Systems(TM) Proventia(R) Desktop Endpoint Security product. The combined feature set will provide customers with a comprehensive desktop protection solution. As a result of an alliance with BitDefender, IBM Internet Security Systems will complement its spyware blocking technology and patented, behavioral-based Virus Prevention System (VPS) with BitDefender's anti-spyware and antivirus solutions.


Internet Security Systems VPS technology is designed to be highly effective at preventing unknown zero-day attacks from entering a corporate network, blocking well over 90 percent of new viruses without a signature update on a typical network. The new layers of protection from BitDefender will provide customers with capabilities for scanning and removing known viruses and spyware from their systems.

"In today's complicated threat landscape, no single layer of security can adequately protect an organization from attack," said Greg Adams, vice president of product development for IBM Internet Security Systems. "However, the continual purchase of incompatible security products and endpoint agents can quickly become unbearable for enterprises to manage. As a solution to these opposing issues, we continue to add layers of protection to our existing integrated security platform to provide customers with a robust, centrally managed security solution that can help them avoid the need to implement additional products to deal with each emerging threat."

Proventia Desktop currently offers the combined functionality of personal firewall, intrusion prevention, buffer overflow exploit prevention, application and communications protection and virus prevention technologies. Through this alliance with BitDefender for additional antivirus and anti-spyware capabilities, IBM Internet Security Systems answers the market demand for comprehensive desktop protection in a single agent. The various layers of the product are designed to work together seamlessly and automatically combat the myriad of threats encountered on workstations and laptops.

"For each type of security technology (firewalls, antivirus, anti-spyware, etc.), there are attackers who are constantly working on ways to evade it to obtain unauthorized access to a network," said Eric Eder, founder and CTO of Intelligent Connections, an IBM partner. "Attack vectors designed to exploit each type of technology require a multi-layered security model for protection. Proventia Desktop provides a multi-layered security approach with deployment of a single agent and unified management, which can lower administrative overhead and associated costs. If a threat is designed to bypass one type of security technology, it can be thwarted by a series of other blocking technologies as it attempts to infiltrate the target machine. We are excited to offer our customers such powerful desktop protection in a single agent."

Through its Proventia protection platform, IBM Internet Security Systems provides comprehensive, multi-layered protection for enterprises from network to host. By infusing all of its products with security intelligence from the Internet Security Systems X-Force(R) research and development group, IBM's solution is designed to protect customers ahead of the threat, before their business assets are impacted by online intrusions. Through its unique Virtual Patch(R) technology, IBM helps shield business assets from attack until companies are able to schedule time to apply patches from affected vendors. With these additional antivirus and anti-spyware features in Internet Security Systems Proventia Desktop, and the end-point compliance and provisioning capabilities from Tivoli, IBM delivers a robust set of security features for the desktop.

Proventia Desktop with new antivirus and anti-spyware features is scheduled to be available by the end of the year. Antivirus and anti-spyware content updates will be made available via annual subscription. Further information on Proventia Desktop can be found at: http://iss.net/products/Proventia_Desktop/index.html

About IBM Internet Security Systems

IBM Internet Security Systems is the trusted security advisor to thousands of the world's leading businesses and governments, providing pre-emptive protection for networks, desktops and servers. An established leader in security since 1994, the IBM Proventia(R) integrated security platform is designed to automatically protect against both known and unknown threats, helping to keep networks up and running and shielding customers from online attacks before they impact business assets. IBM Internet Security Systems products and services are based on the proactive security intelligence of its X-Force(R) research and development team - the unequivocal world authority in vulnerability and threat research. The Internet Security Systems product line is also complemented by comprehensive Managed Security Services and Professional Security Services. For more information, visit the Internet Security Systems Web site at http://www.iss.net or call 800-776-2362.

Internet Security Systems is a trademark and Proventia, X-Force and Virtual Patch are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other companies and products mentioned are trademarks and property of their respective owners.

CERT Signs Telematics Deal With Unibeton Readymix for Fleet Management Solution

The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Technology (CERT), the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology in United Arab Emirates, announced today that it has formally signed a agreement with Unibeton Readymix to have its flagship FALCON telematics devices installed in Unibeton's fleet of more than 350 concrete trucks throughout Dubai.

Unibeton Readymix is one of the top concrete mixing and delivery companies throughout all of Dubai. CERT and IBM (NYSE: IBM) are announcing today that the FALCON devices are now currently being installed in Unibeton vehicles in a pilot program, and full-scale deployment is slated for December of 2006.

FALCON is the first product to come out of a collaborative innovation agreement IBM and CERT announced in April, where engineers and designers from IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions, IBM Research and IBM Design Consulting Services would collaborate with engineers from CERT to build a state-of-the-art, real-time telematics device that would give users the ability to collect automotive data, improve road safety, better manage traffic and prevent accidents.

"CERT FALCON is a next-generation customized telematics solution that can offer a company like Unibeton knowledge to enable best practice to increase productivity, reduce risk, improve safety, streamline processes and reduce costs," said Dr. Tayeb Kamali, Vice-Chairman, CERT Telematics. "FALCON is geared towards fleet management, but can be applied to a host of disciplines to ensure that whatever a company needs to monitor or deliver -- people or product -- it arrives at the right place, right time, right condition."

In the case of Unibeton Readymix, the FALCON product will not only serve as a tracker for their fleet of trucks in terms of positioning and engine maintenance, but also allows for information about a time sensitive product like concrete to be monitored. Traffic in Dubai can be so difficult sometimes; trucks could be stranded in non-stationary traffic for over an hour. Unibeton can monitor its products to ensure on-time delivery, and FALCON will also be tied to the company's inventory system to issue immediate invoices and track sales.

The collaborative innovation relationship between CERT and IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions allows CERT to rethink and reinvent their R&D operations. The relationship give CERT access to an organization within IBM where they can leverage IBM technology, intellectual property, engineering expertise, microprocessor technologies, and process capabilities to drive innovation into their own core products and services. This in turn has helped CERT build an entirely new business division focused on not only telematics solutions, but allows for CERT to focus on becoming a knowledge organization and be contributors to the societal impact of life in Dubai.

"This marks a true milestone in our ongoing efforts to collaborate with CERT to advance technologies that will define and refine the kind of telematics devices that auto owners all over the world could eventually be using in one form or the other," said Raj Desai, Vice President, Vice President, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Travel & Transportation, IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions. "The possibilities to utilize this device in other regions are endless, and we're looking forward to continuing to work with CERT to help make their goal a reality."

Connected to the vehicle, the FALCON can be used for fleet management, trip compliance, vehicle tracking, speed control, and even audio messages. The FALCON device will receive and store vehicle data and will integrate a number of embedded technologies, including Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Global Positioning Systems (GPSs) and Bluetooth technologies.

The FALCON device uses multiple microprocessors based on IBM Power Architecture, plus a multitude of other sensors, to monitor the vehicle's speed, comparing it to the speed limit of the street. If the vehicle speed is higher than the speed limit allowed by the traffic department, the device can talk to the driver and issue a verbal warning.

The CERT - Unibeton Readymix announcement was made at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) in Dubai, one of the largest technology innovation exhibitions every year and the Gulf Region's largest annual gathering of technology and innovation companies. CERT will be showcasing the FALCON technology solution it collaborated with IBM on, at GITEX booth number B3-1.


For more information on CERT, please visit http://www.certonline.com.

For more information about Technology Collaboration Solutions, please visit http://www.ibm.com/technology.

For more information about Design Consulting Services, please visit http://www.ibm.com/technology/designconsulting.

IBM, Power Architecture are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. See http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

IBM Leads in Independent Analyst Firm's Consulting and Systems Integrator Rankings for 4th Consecutive Year

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that it has been ranked as the world's leading consulting and systems integration provider for the 4th consecutive year, according to Gartner Dataquest. In its November 2006 report, "Dataquest Insight: Final Top 10 Worldwide and Regional CSI Providers' Market Share, 2005," Gartner reports that IBM enjoys a 7.7% market share with more than $18 billion in revenue, more than $8 billion clear of its nearest rival.

"IBM has been able to consolidate its position as the market leader in consulting and systems integration by helping clients improve operations and innovate products, services and business models, in a way that delivers business results," said Peggy Vaughan, Global Consulting Services Leader, IBM Global Business Services. "This requires an intimate understanding of our clients' business operations, massive investments in vital growth markets like Service Oriented Architecture, and the ability to structure our global SOA development and delivery and other initiatives in a way that maximizes business results and client satisfaction. This discipline is key to a healthy range of ongoing relationships in this market."

In addition to its #1 ranking worldwide for 2005, IBM also placed in the top three in each major geographic region measured by Gartner, placing first in both the Americas and Europe/Middle-East/Africa, and third in Asia.

To compile these rankings, Gartner measures consulting, development and integration IT services using data from the Gartner Consulting and Solution Implementation Services Market Share Database, that was developed with high-level secondary research and modeling, in addition to primary research, including input from participating vendors.

In recent months, IBM has announced new consulting and systems integration engagements with a range of companies worldwide, including Southern Company, AEM Distribuzione Torino, the Northwest Ohio Regional Growth Partnership (RGP), Statoil, and the US Department of Veteran Affairs.

In addition, IBM has invested in new capabilities to strengthen its position in consulting and systems integration. For example, IBM has launched a Global Business Solution Center to embed consulting and process methodology into repeatable consulting services solutions; IBM recently opened two new SOA solution centers in Asia to facilitate the more consistent and rapid development of industry-specific SOA solutions; and IBM has trained more than 90,000 professionals on SOA methodologies over the last 12 months.

MSFT: Microsoft Statement on Novell Agreement

"Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.

“Both of our companies are fully committed to moving forward with all of the important work under these agreements. The agreements will advance interoperability between Windows and Linux and put in place a new intellectual property bridge between proprietary and open source software. Customers and participants throughout our industry will clearly benefit from these results.

“We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement. At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place."

CSCO: Cisco Unveils Easy to Use SAN Fabric Switch with Enterprise Capabilities at Affordable Price

Cisco® today announced the availability of the Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch, which provides enterprise-class capabilities such as virtual Storage Area Networks (VSANs), advanced security, high availability and flexibility, all powered by the Cisco SAN operating system. The new switch also offers "pay as you grow" on-demand ports and an easy point-and-click wizard that dramatically simplifies SAN setup and management.

HNTB, a multidisciplinary firm well known for its work in architecture, environmental engineering, and urban design and planning, is currently testing the Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch. "I like the GUI interface of the Quick Configuration Wizard- it's very helpful and makes it easy to set up a new SAN," said Wes Owen, manager of infrastructure services at HNTB. "I also liked the feature set of the switch, and the fact that you can add ports easily with an activation license."

The MDS 9124 Fabric Switch offers enterprise-class capabilities and performance at an affordable price with a small footprint, suitable for SMB companies, departmental SANs, or core-edge enterprise SANs. Customers benefit from the advanced capabilities of Cisco SAN OS, including high performance and resiliency of inter-switch links and advanced security features to address compliance and regulatory requirements.

"A switch package that includes modular growth, security and availability features at an entry price that everyone can afford should be welcomed by companies from SMBs to the Fortune 100," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The fact that it can be operational in two clicks means that shops large and small will rejoice."

The Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch provides up to 24 4-Gigabits-per-second Fibre Channel ports in a compact 1 one rack unit form factor with line-rate performance on each port. Customers can select eight, 16 or 24 ports and can add ports as needed, making the MDS 9124 a flexible solution for growing SANs. Ports are added "on demand" through a port-activation license. Feature compatibility with all Cisco MDS Multilayer directors and switches provides investment protection for both new and existing customers.

"Dimension Data has extensive experience in providing data center solutions and recognizes the benefits that the MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch will offer our small to medium clients," said Marc Duvoisin, director of Datacenter Solutions at Dimension Data. "The Quick Configuration Wizard and flexible 'pay as you grow' port capability are ideal for us to help this market segment with easy design and rapid deployment. Our customers who are planning on growth will be especially attracted to the MDS 9124 because it is cost effective and offers the advanced features they need to build flexible and highly secure SANs."

Broad Industry Support
Cisco has garnered broad support from storage vendors that participate in its original storage manufacturer (OSM) and solution technology integrator (STI) partner programs. OSM and STI partners that intend to sell the Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch include Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Network Appliance, Sun Microsystems and Xiotech.

"The simplified configuration and management, flexible scale and affordability offered by the MDS 9124 are highly appealing for many Dell customers," stated Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager for Dell Storage and Networking. "Dell will be working closely with Cisco to include this new storage switch in our networking portfolio."

"EMC and Cisco share a common vision to deliver cost-effective simple SAN technology for midsize enterprise and SMB customers," said Deirdre Wassell, senior manager, Storage Network Marketing, EMC Corporation. "As a member of the EMC Connectrix family of switches and directors, the MDS 9124 will be an ideal complement to our leading networked storage platforms."

"Hitachi Data Systems continues to work with Cisco to provide solutions that support customer requirements for simplicity and flexibility," said Steve TenBarge, vice president, Global Product Marketing, at Hitachi Data Systems. "We look forward to offering the new cost effective Cisco fabric switch to help our customers manage their storage environments."

"The new Cisco MDS 9124 fabric switch fits well with HP's strategy of providing affordable, flexible connectivity solutions for entry-level SANs so customers can put information to work by simplifying SAN deployment and management while providing investment protection for future IT storage infrastructure needs," said Kyle Fitze, director of SAN marketing, StorageWorks Division, HP.

"We are pleased by the affordability and ease of use that the new Cisco MDS 9124 will allow IBM to deliver to our customers," said Robert Mahoney, IBM business line executive, storage networking. "Together with products in the IBM System Storage portfolio, the new Cisco MDS 9124 will be attractive to SMB customers who want to deploy affordable entry level IBM System Storage simplification solutions which can grow to enterprise core-edge continuity solutions with all of the advanced features customers expect, including Virtual SANs, advanced security, and high availability."

Cisco Data Center Networking Solutions
The Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch is part of Cisco Data Center networking solutions, an integrated set of products, best practices and services that allow IT architects and data center professionals to take a phased approach to building and operating a future-proof network platform for their next-generation data centers.

Availability
The Cisco MDS 9124 Multilayer Fabric Switch is expected to be generally available through Cisco storage partners starting as early as December 2006.

CSCO: Cisco Collaborates with HP to Deliver New Fibre Channel Embedded Switch for HP BladeSystem

Cisco® today announced that it is expanding its portfolio of award-winning storage networking switches and directors by developing a new embedded Fibre Channel fabric switch for HP BladeSystem c-Class. The new Cisco embedded switch will allow customers to deploy end-to-end Cisco intelligent SAN services, such as VSANs, advanced security, and high availability.

With this addition to its switch portfolio, Cisco is the only company to offer a full range of connectivity protocols for data center blade servers, uniquely providing customers with the choice of Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel to match their business and IT requirements. Customers benefit through common provisioning and management tools, simplified operations, and reduced operational costs.

"With the new Cisco embedded Fibre Channel fabric switch for HP BladeSystem c-Class, we will offer our customers end-to-end Cisco SAN solutions, helping customers cut costs and streamline SAN management," said Mark Potter, vice president, BladeSystem Division, HP. "This new switch is designed for seamless compatibility between the new BladeSystem c-Class and current Cisco environments - a requirement that's paramount for many of our joint customers."

Many organizations are deploying bladed server architectures to simplify management and operations through standardization on a single platform for operation consistency, reduction in cabling and rack space, and integrated management. Blade server solutions help customers save in power, cooling, floor space, time, money, and resources. By offering a full range of protocols for embedded switches, Cisco helps enable seamless integration with the broader data center infrastructure and extends the benefits of multi-protocol intelligent network architectures to blade servers.

"Blade servers are increasingly important for server consolidation, optimizing power, space and cooling, and simplifying data center provisioning and management," said Ed Chapman, vice president Data Center Business Unit at Cisco. "From the core of the data center to the edge, Cisco provides common provisioning and management capabilities, with a vision of helping to enable end-to-end management for networking, compute, and storage across the data center landscape."

Powered by the Cisco SAN operating system, the new Cisco embedded Fibre Channel fabric switch is fully compatible with the Cisco MDS 9000 family of Multilayer directors and fabric switches for transparent, end-to-end service delivery in large enterprise environments, while enabling customers to take advantage of an end-to-end Cisco management framework to simplify data center operations.

Cisco Data Center Networking Solutions
The new Cisco embedded fabric switch is part of Cisco data center networking solutions, an integrated set of products, best practices and services which allows IT architects and data center professionals to take a phased architectural approach to building and operating a future proof network platform for their next generation data centers.

Availability
Further details of the new embedded switch for the HP BladeSystem c-Class are expected to be announced in the first calendar quarter of 2007.

CSCO: Cisco Collaborates with IBM to Deliver New Fibre Channel Embedded Switches for IBM BladeCenter

Cisco® today announced that it is expanding its portfolio of award-winning storage networking switches and directors by developing a new embedded Fibre Channel fabric switch for IBM blade server chassis. The new Cisco embedded switch will allow customers to deploy end-to-end Cisco intelligent SAN services, such as VSANs, advanced security, and high availability.

With this addition to its switch portfolio, Cisco is the only company to offer a full range of connectivity protocols for data center blade servers, uniquely providing customers with the choice of Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel to match their business and IT requirements. Customers benefit through common provisioning and management tools, simplified operations, and reduced operational costs.

"Today's data center managers need access to a variety of protocols in order to match the specific requirements of their environment with the protocol that best supports those needs," said Bob Passmore, research vice president at Gartner. "Blade servers that can offer multiple protocols and common management tools provide the flexibility and agility that the enterprise demands."

Many organizations are deploying bladed server architectures to simplify management and operations through standardization on a single platform for operation consistency, reduction in cabling and rack space, and integrated management. Blade server solutions help customers save in power, cooling, floor space, time, money, and resources. By offering a full range of protocols for embedded switches, Cisco helps enable seamless integration with the broader data center infrastructure and extends the benefits of multi-protocol intelligent network architectures to blade servers.

Powered by the Cisco SAN OS operating system, the new Cisco embedded Fibre Channel fabric switch is fully compatible with the Cisco MDS 9000 family of Multilayer directors and fabric switches for transparent, end-to-end service delivery in large enterprise environments, while enabling customers to take advantage of an end-to-end Cisco management framework to simplify data center operations.

"IBM has been leading the blade server industry with its innovative approach to systems design and a rich ecosystem of partners, unparalleled in the blade server market," said Doug Balog, Vice President for IBM BladeCenter. "We are pleased to be working with Cisco to continue to expand that ecosystem and look forward to offering our customers the new Cisco embedded Fibre Channel switch across the entire family of BladeCenter chassis."

Cisco Data Center Networking Solutions
The new Cisco embedded fabric switch is part of Cisco data center networking solutions, an integrated set of products, best practices and services which allows IT architects and data center professionals to take a phased architectural approach to building and operating a future proof network platform for their next generation data centers.

Availability
Further details of the new embedded switch for the IBM BladeCenter are expected to be announced in the first calendar quarter of 2007.

CSCO: Cisco Completes Acquisition of Orative Corp

Cisco Systems® today announced it has completed the acquisition of privately-held Orative Corp of San Jose, California. Orative provides an application that allows Cisco to extend its Unified Communications portfolio to mobile devices such as cell phones and smartphones.

With Orative Enterprise Software, mobile phone users can coordinate conversations, collaborate with colleagues, view information on Unity voicemail messages, screen unwanted telephone calls and interruptions, and securely access personal and corporate phone books. Together, Cisco and Orative will transform the mobile phone into a true business device, using Cisco Unified CallManager for call control, Cisco MeetingPlace for collaboration and Cisco Unity as the voicemail platform.

With the close of the transaction, the Orative team and product portfolio are now integrated into Cisco's Voice Technology Group, led by Don Proctor, senior vice president.

CMCSA: Comcast to Offer Its High-Speed Internet Service on Amazon.com (AMZN), World's Largest E-tailer

Comcast today announced it has opened an online store on Amazon.com. This agreement brings together the nation's number one broadband provider and the world's largest e-tailer. The Comcast Store is a one-stop destination for Amazon.com's growing customer base to learn about and purchase Comcast High-Speed Internet and related offerings.

Through the 2006 holiday season, Comcast is presenting customers who sign up for Comcast's high-speed Internet service on Amazon.com with a $100 Amazon.com(R) Gift Certificate, good to use towards any purchase on the site. Amazon.com customers can also take advantage of Comcast's featured offer, which includes high-speed Internet for six months at $19.99/month(1).

"Comcast and Amazon share a commitment for offering customers the best products and services and a focus on customer satisfaction. Our relationship with Amazon is another way we continue to make it easy for customers to purchase Comcast High-Speed Internet at a time and place that's convenient for them. By creating an online store on Amazon, we can now be even more accessible to the site's huge customer base of more than 61 million active customer accounts," said Bob Faught, senior vice president of retail sales for Comcast.

Earlier this year, Amazon.com expanded its consumer electronics business by incorporating a broadband services category. Since it was first introduced on Amazon.com in 1999, consumer electronics has become one of the site's largest businesses.

Amazon.com customers can visit the Comcast Store to purchase Comcast High- Speed Internet, which includes value-added features, such as McAfee Security ($114 value), Rhapsody Radio PLUS ($60 value) and PhotoShow Deluxe Combo Pack ($89 value), all for no additional charge.

Comcast has successfully offered its services through the indirect retail channel since 1999.

To visit the Comcast Store on Amazon.com, go to http://www.amazon.com/comcast.


(1) Amazon.com(R) Gift Certificate offer and Comcast High-Speed Internet
offer expire 12/31/06 and are limited to eligible video customers in
participating wired and serviceable areas. Other restrictions apply. To
learn more details and restrictions about the Comcast High-Speed Internet
and Amazon.com(R) Gift Certificate offers, please visit
http://www.amazon.com/comcast.

VZ: Verizon Business Receives 2006 Frost & Sullivan Customer Service Leadership Award for Managed Services

Verizon Business is the 2006 recipient of Frost & Sullivan's Customer Service Leadership Award within the North American managed services market.

Verizon Business received the award based on its leading customer-centric service and support, expansive global portfolio of managed network and information technology solutions, Rapid Fault Isolation and Restoration process, and personalized care via its global team of more than 6,500 technicians and network engineers.

"In addition to offering a range of local area network, wide area network, telephony and professional management services, Verizon Business has made significant improvements to its managed services customer service metrics," said Imran Khan, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "This provides the company with a strong degree of differentiation in enterprise network monitoring and management activities. Verizon Business' automated fault-management system has enabled it to reduce fault isolation and fault correction time, thereby giving it a major lift over rival managed services operators' network management services."

Frost & Sullivan noted in the report that "Verizon Business has effectively integrated its MCI acquisition to expand and enhance its managed services product portfolio to include a variety of telecom and information technology services and has also continued to make significant improvements to its managed services customer service metrics over the past several months." MCI won the same Frost & Sullivan Award in 2005.

According to the report, an increasing number of large businesses are showing a greater inclination toward using managed services due to several factors, including: increasing movement toward network convergence, greater focus on core business, the need to reduce operating costs, and geographic expansion of business operations.

The Frost & Sullivan report also cited the Verizon Business Integrated Management Platform for Advanced Communications Technologies (IMPACT) for enabling Verizon Business to offer some of the best service level agreements (SLAs) for its managed services. The automated IMPACT technology reduces human error and establishes the groundwork for industry-leading SLAs and rapid responsiveness to customer needs. The "development and deployment of effective remote network monitoring and management systems remains a key success factor within the managed telecom services market, and Verizon Business has continued to excel in this area over the past couple of years through continued improvements to its customer support processes," the report said.

With continued investment in its IMPACT platform and other rapid fault isolation and restoration capabilities, Verizon Business is able to offer a 3.5-hour time to repair (TTR) service commitment on select Verizon Business networks with full management and maintenance service options.

In addition, Frost & Sullivan noted, Verizon Business' services are further enhanced with E-Bonding, which makes it easier for customers to order, manage and pay for needed services via a direct interface with the Verizon Business service portal.

"These are key customer-support differentiators for Verizon Business' Managed Network Solutions," said Jim DeMerlis, vice president, managed services, Verizon Business. "As a global managed services leader, Verizon Business will continue to invest in seamless service delivery and customer support."

Verizon Business today manages more than 3,500 customer networks across 142 countries, including more than 25,000 third-party circuits across 60 global carriers. With a comprehensive portfolio of global enterprise solutions - delivering support for everything from the server, to the network, all the way down to the desktop and beyond with mobile computing devices - Verizon Business offers customers both bundled and a la carte service options for improving and managing business-critical applications and information technology infrastructures.

About Frost & Sullivan Best Practices
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics and demographics. For more information, visit www.frost.com

IBM Simplifies Federated Identity Management for Smaller Companies

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new security software built for small and mid-size organizations that wish to establish a single password to log on to organizations outside of their internal network, and to more effectively manage identities across their infrastructure.

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway brings enterprise-level federated identity to smaller organizations that need to connect with larger organizations securely via the Web for reasons such as an independent retailer checking inventory, an insurance company branch requiring access to parent company resources or a service provider needing to sell new services such as a ringtone.

Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway is designed to meet the speed, ease-of-use and affordability requirements of SMB customers. By simplifying the required architecture, this offering will allow faster, lower cost deployments of federated single sign on.

In today's marketplace, businesses need to collaborate with customers, partners, agents and suppliers online, but are now finding themselves with multiple user identities and passwords for a variety of online accounts. Federated identity allows employees, customers or partners to log on to a company's Web site, get their identity authenticated and then have that site vouch for their identity so they can gain access to other companies' Web sites and networks without having to log on again.

"Many smaller companies that develop innovative products need to use larger companies as a selling channel," said Hershel Harris, vice president, storage and security software, IBM Tivoli. "Collaboration with customers, partners, agents, or providers often plays a key role in moving toward a Service Oriented Architecture. Federated identity management ties companies together in a secure fashion."

Unlike many competitive offerings, Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway does not rely on proprietary interfaces that tightly bind business applications to the federation software. The software provides interoperability with federation partners using federated identity standards and specifications, including SAML and Web Services standards. This loose coupling between Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway, business applications, and federation partners provides faster deployment times and reduced ongoing maintenance costs.

Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway also provides audit logs, tracking and incident reports -- as well as security best practices -- to meet corporate and regulatory compliance policies.

In a 2006 IBM SMB Global Survey, more than half of the C-level executives from more than 1,000 SMB organizations around the world named "collaboration across employees, partners and/or suppliers" and "speed to market with new products/services" as their chief business challenges. They also said the top area they intended to invest capital and resources was enterprise wide security.

Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway has a server-based pricing model, enabling clients to start with a single application.

IBM's Tivoli security software helps prevent unauthorized access to valuable customer, employee and business data and facilitates compliance with corporate security policy and regulatory requirements. It also complements IBM Internet Security Systems products and services. Tivoli security software is part of IBM's portfolio of service management software, which automates some of the most challenging processes associated with managing a complex IT environment. These include managing storage devices, and deploying new software releases and patches. The software helps customers fight rising IT costs, manage constant change and meet the demand to stay competitive in the marketplace.

For more information on IBM Tivoli, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli

VZ: Verizon Business to Offer Free Calling During Holiday Season to U.S. Troops in Iraq

In an ongoing effort to help military families and loved ones stay connected around the world, Verizon Business today announced it will again provide free phone calls during this holiday season for U.S. Armed Forces personnel stationed in Iraq.

Verizon Business will provide the calls from Nov. 22 through 28 and from Dec. 22 through Jan. 2. This is the fourth consecutive year that the company is offering free holiday calls for military personnel in Iraq.

"For our troops stationed far away from home, hearing the sound of a loved-one's voice can go a long way to lift the spirits during the holidays,'' said Jerry Edgerton, group president for Verizon Federal, the sales organization within Verizon Business dedicated to serving federal government customers. "Verizon Business has made it a tradition to help the troops stay connected during the holiday season as a gesture of appreciation for the sacrifices they make daily."

As a leading communications provider to the federal government, Verizon Business has deployed to Iraq a state-of-the-art mobile communications facility outfitted with phones to allow military personnel to make calls. Verizon Business throughout the year makes technology, resources and employee support available to military personnel and their families around the world.

Verizon Business also is supporting the USO of Metropolitan Washington on Dec. 17 at Fort Belvoir, Va., by hosting a Verizon Business Phone Home for the Holidays program in conjunction with the USO's holiday event. Verizon Business will deploy one of its mobile emergency communications vehicles to allow troops and their families to make free local, long-distance and international calls as well as send e-mails.

VZ: Idearc to Begin Trading Under Symbol 'IAR' on Nov. 20

On Monday, Nov. 20, Idearc Inc. common stock will begin trading in the regular way market on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol "IAR."

The previously announced spin-off of Idearc to shareholders of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) was completed today, and Idearc now owns what were the Verizon domestic print and Internet yellow pages directories publishing operations. Verizon distributed a dividend of one share of Idearc common stock for every 20 shares of Verizon common stock held as of 5 p.m. on Nov. 1 (the "Idearc Stock Dividend").

Beginning Nov. 6 and continuing through the close of business today, there have been two markets in Verizon common stock: a "regular way" market (which includes the Idearc Stock Dividend) and an "ex-distribution" market (which does not include the Idearc Stock Dividend).

Verizon has been advised by the NYSE that regular way trading under the symbol "VZ" includes the Idearc Stock Dividend through the close of business today. This means that a purchaser who buys shares of Verizon common stock in the regular way market under the symbol "VZ" through the close of business today will also buy the right to receive the Idearc Stock Dividend associated with those Verizon shares. Similarly, when-issued trading in Idearc common stock under the symbol "IAR wi" will continue on the NYSE through the close of business today.

Beginning on Nov. 20, Verizon common stock trading under the symbol "VZ" will no longer include the Idearc Stock Dividend.

For further information, see Idearc's Form 10 Registration Statement, as amended, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available online at www.sec.gov.

SAP Signs Global Sponsorship with Tennis Sensation Andy Roddick

Leading business software provider SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that it has signed a three-year sponsorship agreement with tennis sensation Andy Roddick, ranked #5 in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the top-ranked American player.

Roddick, the 2003 U.S. Open Champion and two-time winner of the SAP Open, will serve as a global ambassador for SAP in tennis. He also will partner with SAP on customer engagement opportunities on the worldwide ATP circuit. As part of the sponsorship agreement, Roddick will wear the SAP logo on the right sleeve of his tennis apparel while on tour.

Roddick will champion the SAP brand, beginning with the 2007 season and continuing through 2009.

“I am delighted to be associated with a global, blue-chip brand such as SAP, as I play tennis around the world,” said Roddick. “I look forward to a very successful partnership with SAP and to building on the momentum I’ve gained this year.”

The 24-year-old Roddick clinched the U.S. Open Series title for the second straight year by winning his first title of 2006 at the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by reaching the U.S. Open singles final.

“We are excited to have Andy as an SAP ambassador,” said Marty Homlish, global chief marketing officer and corporate officer of the SAP group. “He is one of the most talented and popular players on the ATP circuit, and he personifies the same winning attributes – such as determination, passion and resourcefulness – that make SAP the leading provider of business software.”

Entering the 2007 season, Roddick will seek his third title at the SAP Open, scheduled for Feb. 12-18, 2007, at the HP Pavilion at San Jose. He joins a field of players that already includes fellow American James Blake, defending champion Andy Murray and the world’s former #1 player, Marat Safin.

The 2007 tournament will mark the sixth time in seven years that Roddick has played the SAP Open. He is currently scheduled to play his first-round singles match at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, against a player to be determined.

The SAP Open is the second-oldest men’s professional tennis tournament in the United States, first played in 1889 in Monterey, Calif. Ticket packages to the 2007 SAP Open are on sale now by calling +1 (408) ACE-2121. For more information about the SAP Open, check out the official tournament Web site at www.sapopentennis.com.

VRSN: VeriSign Receives Anticipated Letter from the Nasdaq

VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the networked world, announced today that it received a Nasdaq Staff Determination Letter from The Nasdaq Stock Market on November 10, 2006 stating that VeriSign is not in compliance with the filing requirements under Nasdaq Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14) due to the delayed filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2006.

VeriSign received a similar notice on August 14, 2006 due to the delay in filing its Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2006. On September 26, 2006, VeriSign appeared at a hearing before a Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel ("Panel") and presented a plan for compliance with Nasdaq's listing requirements, which also contemplated the September 30, 2006 Form 10-Q. Pending a decision by the Panel, VeriSign's common stock will remain listed on The Nasdaq Global Market.

As previously disclosed, VeriSign's Board of Directors has commenced an independent review and analysis of VeriSign’s historical stock option grants. VeriSign intends to file its quarterly reports as soon as practicable after completion of its internal review.

ADSK: Autodesk reports record quarterly revenues of $457 million

Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today reported record quarterly revenues of $457 million, an increase of 21 percent over the third quarter of fiscal 2006.

"Autodesk had a very solid quarter," said Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO. "Customers around the world increasingly recognize the innovation and productivity that Autodesk products provide. Customer adoption of Autodesk's industry-leading 3D products is increasing and customer demand for our 2D solutions remains very strong. Revenues from emerging economies increased to 15 percent of total revenue. Long term market trends favor Autodesk and we continue to gain share as we execute our key strategies."

Operational Highlights

Autodesk's performance was driven by strong increases in revenues from 3D products, products for the media and entertainment market and strong increases in revenue from AutoCAD new seats and subscriptions. In addition, total revenues from new seats, subscriptions and emerging economies showed strong growth.

The company's 3D products, Inventor, Revit and Civil 3D, continue to increase their market penetration. Combined revenues from these model-based design products increased 36 percent over the third quarter of fiscal 2006 to a record $98 million. 3D revenues reached 22 percent of total revenues in the quarter. In total, Autodesk shipped more than 38,000 commercial seats of 3D in the quarter including 18,200 seats of Revit, 13,000 seats of Inventor and 6,900 seats of Civil 3D.

Revenues from the Media and Entertainment segment increased 50 percent over the third quarter of fiscal 2006 to a record $64 million. Animation revenues were $33 million in the quarter, an increase of nearly 160 percent over the third quarter of fiscal 2006 and 14 percent sequentially. 3ds Max revenues increased 28 percent compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Revenues from Autodesk Maya reached a record level, increasing 33 percent sequentially. Advanced Systems revenues increased 5 percent both sequentially and compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Over 80 percent of Advanced Systems product revenue in the quarter was Linux-based.

Revenues from new seats increased by 20 percent compared to the third quarter of last year. Revenues from new seats of Revit and Civil 3D increased 94 percent and 44 percent, respectively, compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Revenues from new seats of AutoCAD increased by 24 percent compared to the third quarter of last year. In addition, revenues from Buzzsaw increased 79 percent compared to the third quarter of last year. Revenues from new seats and emerging businesses continue to represent approximately two-thirds of total revenues.

Subscription revenues increased 50 percent compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2006 to $111 million or 24 percent of total revenues. Continued strength in subscription attach rates and renewal rates drove a $12 million sequential increase in deferred subscription revenues. Although upgrade revenues declined, as expected, combined subscription and upgrade revenues increased 17 percent compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2006 and continue to represent approximately one-third of total revenues.

Once again, emerging economies contributed robust growth in revenues. Revenues from the emerging economies in Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East increased 38 percent over the third quarter of fiscal 2006 and represented 15 percent of total revenues in the third quarter.

OTHER FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

* Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities increased by $129
million sequentially to $597 million as of October 31, 2006.
* Total backlog was $352 million as of October 31, 2006, including
$333 million of deferred revenues. Deferred subscription revenues
increased $12 million sequentially to $275 million. In addition,
there was $19 million of unshipped product orders at quarter end.
* Channel inventory was slightly below the normal range of three to
four weeks.
* DSO decreased by one day sequentially to 51 days.
* Capital expenditures were $7 million.
* The company received $10 million from employee stock plans. As a
result of the voluntary review of the company's historical stock
option granting practices and the related accounting, no shares were
repurchased during the quarter.
* There were approximately 231 million total shares outstanding and
242 million diluted shares outstanding in the third quarter.
* Revenues in the Americas increased 21 percent over the third quarter
of fiscal 2006 to $194 million.
* Revenues in EMEA increased 20 percent over the third quarter of
fiscal 2006 to $160 million.
* Revenues in Asia Pacific increased 22 percent over the third quarter
of fiscal 2006 to $103 million. Revenues in Japan increased three
percent compared to last year. Excluding Japan, revenues in Asia
Pacific increased 36 percent compared to last year.
* In the third quarter of fiscal 2007, spending for total costs and
expenses -- which include cost of license and other revenue, cost of
maintenance revenues, marketing and sales, research and development,
and general and administrative - increased by $22 million
sequentially, as expected. This increase includes a $3 million
write-down of Advanced Systems inventory, $3.6 million in legal, tax
and accounting fees relating to the voluntary stock option review
and a previously disclosed $8.8 million one-time cash bonus to non-
executive employees enrolled in the company's Employee Stock
Purchase Plan. This bonus was approved by the Board to compensate
for the benefits lost by non-executive employees because Autodesk
did not issue shares through the Employee Stock Purchase Plan due to
the ongoing review.
* Interest and other income increased by $3 million sequentially to
$6 million.

Business OutlookThe following statements are forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations and which involve risks and uncertainties some of which are set forth below. As a result of the voluntary stock option review, the company is not providing EPS guidance at this time.

Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2007

Net revenues for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 are expected to be between $490 million and $500 million. Spending for total costs and expenses in the fourth quarter is expected to be approximately flat with the third quarter. Estimates of fourth quarter spending for total costs and expenses include approximately $5M in legal, tax and accounting fees related to the voluntary stock option review and do not take into account other charges, if any, likely to result from the voluntary stock option review.

Full Year Fiscal 2007

For fiscal year 2007, net revenues are expected to be between $1.832 billion and $1.842 billion.

First Quarter Fiscal 2008

Net revenues for the first quarter of fiscal 2008 are expected to be approximately flat with the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. Consistent with normal seasonal trends, spending for total costs and expenses for the first quarter of fiscal 2008 is projected to increase approximately $10 million sequentially. First quarter fiscal 2008 estimates of spending exclude legal, tax, and accounting fees, if any, or other charges, if any, likely to result from the voluntary stock option review.

Full Year Fiscal 2008

For fiscal year 2008, net revenues are expected to be between $2.075 billion and $2.125 billion. Operating margins for the year are expected to increase 3 to 4 percentage points, excluding expenses or other charges, if any, resulting from the voluntary stock option review. Not taking into account SFAS 123R stock-based compensation expenses, amortization of acquisition related intangibles, litigation accruals, legal, tax and accounting fees, if any, and other charges, if any, resulting from the voluntary stock option review operating margins for fiscal year 2008 are expected to increase 1 to 1.5 percentage points.

Stock Option Review

As previously disclosed the company is conducting a voluntary review of its historical stock option granting practices and related accounting issues. The company plans to become current in its periodic reports required under the Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, following the completion of the independent review.

As previously disclosed, the Audit Committee has reached a preliminary conclusion that the actual measurement dates for financial accounting purposes of certain broad-based employee stock option grants issued in the past differ from the recorded grant dates of such awards. As a result, the Audit Committee believes the company will record additional non-cash stock-based compensation expense related to stock option grants, but it is not yet able to determine the amount of such charges or the resulting tax and accounting impact of these actions or whether any historical periods would require restatement. Any additional non-cash stock-based compensation expense recorded will not affect the company's previously reported cash positions or revenues.

The Audit Committee's review is ongoing and the conclusions discussed in this press release are preliminary.

Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Autodesk are included in the company's reports on Form 10-K for the year ended January 31, 2006 and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2006 which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Autodesk does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

VZ: Verizon and Rainbow Media Holdings Sign Programming Deal

Verizon today announced a multiyear agreement with Rainbow Media Holdings that will make Rainbow's popular sports and entertainment programming available for the first time to Verizon FiOS TV subscribers.

The agreement includes distribution rights for MSG Network, FSN New York, FSN New England and for FSN New England's high-definition programming. Verizon will also carry Rainbow's national networks -- AMC, WE tv, IFC and fuse, along with its original on-demand networks, Mag Rack and sportskool.

"Our customers in New York and New England will now be able to watch these regional sports networks on Verizon FiOS TV," said Terry Denson, vice president of FiOS TV content strategy and acquisition. "In addition, FiOS TV customers everywhere will be able to enjoy the movies, lifestyle programming and other entertainment available on Rainbow's networks."

Said Robert Broussard, president, Rainbow national sales, "We are pleased to have completed a comprehensive agreement with Verizon, which includes the rights to carry our popular national networks, our award-winning regional sports services and our innovative VOD services. Rainbow's channels offer a rich portfolio of targeted content, including Hollywood and independent movies, original programming, music and popular regional sports."

About Rainbow Media Holdings
Rainbow Media Holdings LLC is a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC). Rainbow Media creates and manages some of the country's most compelling and dynamic entertainment brands including popular national and regional television channels AMC, fuse, The Independent Film Channel (IFC), WE tv, and two FSN affiliated regional sports networks managed by Rainbow Sports Networks. The company also manages Mag Rack and sportskool, two original on-demand networks; VOOM HD Networks, the largest and most diverse suite of high definition channels available anywhere; IFC Entertainment, its film distribution, production and exhibition division; Rainbow Advertising Sales Corporation, its advertising sales division; and Rainbow Network Communications, its full service network programming origination and distribution company.

ORCL: Leading Industry Analyst Firm Ranks Oracle's Siebel Applications At Top in Vertical Market Report

A recent IDC study, "Americas Customer Relationship Management Software 2005 Vendor Shares: Top 10 Vendors by Vertical Market," states Oracle's Siebel CRM takes the revenue lead in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and utilities industries.


IDC used market share positioning for CRM software vendors by using a vertical segmentation of 2005 revenue. According to the report, Siebel, whose revenue is presented separate from Oracle for comparison purposes, clearly dominates the market. The report also states that IDC expects the manufacturing, communications and media, and healthcare industries to show the strongest growth in CRM software over the next five years, with compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 8.1%, 8.0% and 7.2% respectively. IDC continues to report that firms that have penetrated into these industries will have the greatest future growth potential in CRM software.

"Siebel maintains the largest share of revenue in five of the eight vertical industries reported," said IDC Analyst Mary Wardley. "While Oracle and Siebel are presented separately in this study, the acquisition of Siebel by Oracle increases the company's relative strength in each of its first-place industries." 1

1 IDC "Americas Customer Relationship Management Software 2005 Vendor Shares: Top 10 Vendors by Vertical Market," by Noel Stevens and Mary Wardley, November 2006

CMCSA: Comcast Names Mary McManus Senior Director, FCC and Regulatory Policy

Comcast Corporation, the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, today announced that Mary McManus has joined the company as Senior Director, FCC and Regulatory Policy in Washington, DC. She will serve as one of Comcast's senior lobbyists focused on the FCC.

McManus joins Comcast from the FCC, where she served in the Office of General Counsel and the Competition Policy Division of the Wireline Competition Bureau, focusing in the areas of spectrum, competition, and administrative law. Prior to joining the FCC, she worked in the global public affairs office of Lucent Technologies. McManus previously worked in the Office of FCC Commissioner Susan Ness, where she was the Commissioner's legal advisor on cable, spectrum auctions and international issues. She also served as Republican communications counsel for the Senate Commerce Committee.

Mary will work beside Kerry Knott, Vice President of Government Affairs; Jim Coltharp, Chief Policy Advisor, FCC and Regulatory Policy; Brian Kelly, Senior Director, Federal Government Affairs; Melissa Maxfield, Senior Director, Federal Government Affairs; John Morabito, Senior Director/Policy Counsel; Susan Gonzales, Senior Director, Federal Government Affairs; Kim Scardino, Senior Director, External Affairs and Public Policy, Policy Counsel; David Don, Senior Director, Spectrum Policy; and Peter Filon, Senior Director, Federal Government Affairs, in Comcast's Washington, DC government affairs office.

Knott said, "Mary's skills and experience are a perfect complement to our Washington office. Mary understands the issues that face our industry and our company, and I look forward to working with her to help communicate Comcast's message on the hill and at the FCC."

"We are thrilled to have Mary join Comcast's Washington team," says Jim Coltharp, Chief Policy Advisor, FCC and Regulatory Policy. "Her considerable experience on a broad range of issues will make her an effective advocate for Comcast."

McManus received a B.A., English, Trinity College and J.D., Georgetown University Law Center.

IBM BladeCenter Systems Up to 30 Percent More Energy Efficient Than Comparable HP Blades

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that its BladeCenter system uses up to 30 percent less energy than HP BladeSystem. As energy prices rise to nearly 15 cents per kilowatt hour in New York City, 21 cents per kilowatt hour in Tokyo and up to 23 cents per kilowatt hour in London, businesses can save hundreds, thousands or even millions of dollars in energy costs each year depending on the size of their datacenter.

Based on internal IBM testing, IBM's AMD Opteron-based BladeCenter (LS21) within the BladeCenter system uses up to 30 percent less energy than the comparable HP AMD Opteron-based BladeSystem (BL465c) in the HP c-Class system when both systems are idle, and up to 18 percent less energy when both systems are running at full load.[1]

IBM's Intel Xeon-based BladeCenter (HS21) within the BladeCenter system uses up to 26 percent less energy than the comparable HP Intel Xeon-based BladeSystem (BL460c) in the HP c-Class system when both systems are idle, and up to 13 percent less energy when both systems are running at full load.[2] Comparisons are based on systems using the same dual-core Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron microprocessors.

According to a 2006 report by the Robert Frances Group, across industry, the average utilization of most processors in the data center is between 15-20 percent.[3] Therefore, managing a server at its least productive state becomes critical to managing the issue of energy consumption in the datacenter.

Key IBM innovations that set the BladeCenter architecture apart include: a shared power infrastructure with up to 90 percent energy efficient power supplies able to reach peak efficiency even under small load; and IBM Calibrated Vector Cooling technology to allow dual paths of air to each component to improve uptime and longevity while also reducing wasteful air movement.

IBM's energy-smart BladeCenter design, pioneered by IBM Research, features energy efficient power supplies (which are up to 90 percent efficient) saving as much as 28 percent in electrical usage over many commonly available power supplies (which are often only 60 to 70 percent efficient). IBM's shared cooling approach that utilizes high-efficiency blowers, can consume up to 60 percent less power than the newest design in the HP c-Class, based on internal IBM testing. These smarter power and cooling architectures, combined with smart use of energy efficient components, such as low voltage processors, allow IBM users to extract the most performance from every kilowatt.

"This is a big competitive advantage in a product segment where energy efficiency is perhaps the chief consideration," said Doug Balog, vice president and business line executive, IBM BladeCenter. "In an environment where the cost of operating a system is approaching the cost of acquiring the hardware, HP has delivered a new system that is much less efficient in its use of power."

Unlike the blade servers available for HP's c-Class chassis, which are not backward compatible with HP's older blade chassis, IBM's high-density modular blade server is designed to support the entire family of BladeCenter chassis. HP is on its third system redesign in five years[4], while IBM BladeCenter is still based on its original design and demonstrates better efficiency.

The Price of Power

IBM also introduced today the second generation of PowerExecutive, an industry-first energy management technology, now enabling clients to cap the amount of power used by a single server or groups of servers to optimize energy use and application performance. PowerExecutive, an extension to IBM Director systems management software, allows clients to "meter" actual power usage and trend data for any single physical system or group of systems.

Today, the label rating on the back of a server is the only guide that IT managers have when planning for power and cooling capacity for their datacenter. IT managers are often forced to resort to an 80 percent rule to safely estimate power consumption based on the label rating, which means they may over budget energy requirements.

IBM PowerExecutive allows these IT managers to see the difference between their power budget and actual power usage, enabling them to optimize power consumption and stretch their budgets over time. Putting a cap on the systems power use, based on the workload and business trends over time, allows IT managers to safely limit the amount of energy draw from the server, without sacrificing performance or productivity, or adding servers to the existing infrastructure.

"Better systems and information leads to better decisions aimed at maximizing business performance. Whether delivering superior design innovation or tools to more accurately plan, monitor, and control power consumption to meet business expectations, IBM helps clients dramatically improve power utilization and reduce energy costs for a significant competitive advantage," said Balog.

About IBM BladeCenter

IBM has shipped over half a million BladeCenter systems since the product's inception in 2002. According to data from industry analyst firm Gartner, IBM retained its lead as the number one blade server vendor in the world garnering 42.8 percent revenue share in the second quarter 2006, 13 percent better than its closest competitor. (Gartner, Servers Quarterly Statistics United States: Database, 22 August 2006.)

About IBM CoolBlue

IBM has developed some of the industry's leading power and cooling technologies based on the skills and experience of over 40 years of mainframe technology development. The CoolBlue portfolio of IBM innovations includes comprehensive hardware and systems-management tools for computing environments, enabling clients to better optimize the power consumption, management and cooling of infrastructure at the system, rack and datacenter levels. The CoolBlue portfolio includes IBM PowerConfigurator, PowerExecutive, and Rear Door Heat eXchanger.



For more information about IBM BladeCenter, go to: www.ibm.com/bladecenter


[1] -- Results of up to 29.9 percent when idle, up to 18.7 percent with full load.

Side-by-side tests performed using the following blade server configurations:

LS21: 2 x 2.4GHz AMD Opteron 2216HE CPUs, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 1 x 36GB 10k rpm HDD, 0 x I/O cards; IBM BladeCenter configuration for LS21: 2 power supplies, 2 blowers, 0 Switch Modules, 1 Management Module.

BL465c: 2 x 2.4GHz AMD Opteron 2216HE CPUs, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 1 x 36GB 10k rpm HDD, 0 x I/O cards; HP c7000 Enclosure configuration for BL465c test: 2 power supplies, 4 fans, 0 Switch Modules, 1 Management Module.

[2] -- Results of up to 25.9 percent when idle, up to 13.6 percent with full load.

Side-by-side tests performed using the following blade server configurations:

BL460c: 2 x 2.66GHx Intel Xeon 5150 CPUs, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 1 x 36GB 10k rpm HDD, 0 x I/O cards; HP c7000 Enclosure configuration for BL460c test: 2 power supplies, 4 fans, 0 Switch Modules, 1 Management Module.

HS21: 2 x 2.66GHz Intel Xeon 5150 CPUs, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 1 x 36GB 10k rpm HDD, 0 x I/O cards; IBM BladeCenter configuration for HS21: 2 power supplies, 2 blowers, 0 Switch Modules, 1 Management Module.

[3] -- "The Rise to Power of Power: Dealing with the New Data Center Constraint," Jerald Murphy, Robert Frances Group. (2006)

[4] -- HP BLe introduced January 2002. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2002pmc/pr2002012801.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

HP pClass introduced August 2002. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2002/020826c.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

HP c-Class introduced June 2006. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2006/060614xa.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Avon (AVP) and IBM Announce Strategic Business Partnership to Strengthen Avon's Human Resources Organization

Avon Products, Inc. (NYSE: AVP) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a strategic multi-year business partnership by which IBM Global Services will provide Avon with a portfolio of specialized human resources services and technologies. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Under the partnership, IBM will provide Avon with support for certain
key HR processes, including compensation, payroll, benefits, and
performance management. IBM also will maintain HR call center support for Avon employees in a select number of Avon countries worldwide.

In addition, IBM will provide Avon with specialized technologies,
including a Global Human Resources Information System, as well as compensation planning, performance management and workforce analytic tools to standardize processes and make Avon's HR function more streamlined and efficient.

"We are pleased to partner with IBM as we continue to build a leaner, faster and more strategic human resources organization," said Lucien Alziari, Avon's Senior Vice President, Human Resources. "IBM's world-class capabilities will enable Avon's HR professionals to serve our employees with leading-edge services, and at the same time, to focus more fully on implementing our strategic talent management and organizational development
initiatives."

Mary Sue Rogers, Vice President, Human Resources Business Process Services, IBM, added: "Leading companies such as Avon are increasingly using business transformation outsourcing as a tool to drive strategic value, allowing them to become more flexible and adaptive while focusing employees on the company's core competencies. IBM's extensive experience in human resources services and the consumer products industry will bring innovation and new efficiencies to Avon and its employees."

Avon, the company for women, is a leading global beauty company, with over $8 billion in annual revenue. As the world's largest direct seller, Avon markets to women in well over 100 countries through over five million independent Avon Sales Representatives. Avon's product line includes beauty
products, fashion jewelry and apparel, and features such well-recognized brand names as Avon Color, Anew, Skin-So-Soft, Avon Solutions, Advance Techniques, Avon Naturals, Mark, and Avon Wellness. Learn more about Avon and its products at http://www.avoncompany.com

INTC: Intel Announces 12.5 Percent Increase in Cash Dividend

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has approved a 12.5 percent increase in the quarterly cash dividend to 11.25 cents per share beginning with the dividend that will be declared in the first quarter of 2007.

"Intel's product leadership, focus on new growth opportunities, efforts to drive greater efficiencies and continued emphasis on R&D and manufacturing, have put the company on a solid footing for the future," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO. "With one of the highest dividend yields in the technology industry, today's announcement is yet another sign of our confidence in the future of our business."

Intel began paying a cash dividend in 1992 and has paid out approximately $8.0 billion to its stockholders over the past 56 quarters. Intel cash dividends for 2006 will total approximately $2.3 billion.

The above statements and any others in this document that refer to plans and expectations for 2007 and the future are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Many factors could affect Intel's actual results, and variances from Intel's current expectations regarding such factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Intel presently considers the factors set forth below to be the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the corporation's published expectations:

• Intel operates in intensely competitive industries that are characterized by a high percentage of costs that are fixed or difficult to reduce in the short term, significant pricing pressures, and product demand that is highly variable and difficult to forecast. Revenue and the gross margin percentage are affected by the timing of new Intel product introductions and the demand for and market acceptance of Intel's products; actions taken by Intel's competitors, including product offerings, marketing programs and pricing pressures and Intel's response to such actions; Intel's ability to respond quickly to technological developments and to incorporate new features into its products; and the availability of sufficient inventory of Intel products and related components from other suppliers to meet demand. Factors that could cause demand to be different from Intel's expectations include customer acceptance of Intel and competitors' products; changes in customer order patterns, including order cancellations; changes in the level of inventory at customers; and changes in business and economic conditions.


• Dividend declarations and the dividend rate are at the discretion of Intel's board of directors, and plans for future dividends may be revised by the board. Intel's dividend program could be affected by changes in Intel's operating results, its capital spending programs, changes in its cash flows and changes in the tax laws, as well as by the level and timing of acquisition and investment activity.


• Intel's results could be impacted by unexpected economic, social, political and physical/infrastructure conditions in the countries in which Intel, its customers or its suppliers operate, including military conflict and other security risks, natural disasters, infrastructure disruptions, health concerns and fluctuations in currency exchange rates.


• Intel's results could be affected by adverse effects associated with product defects and errata (deviations from published specifications), and by litigation or regulatory matters involving intellectual property, stockholder, consumer, antitrust and other issues, such as the litigation and regulatory matters described in Intel's SEC reports.

A more detailed discussion of these and other factors that could affect Intel's results is included in Intel's SEC filings, including the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2006.

INTC: Intel Elects Yahoo! Executive Susan Decker to Board of Directors

Intel Corporation today announced that Susan Decker, chief financial officer and executive vice president, finance and administration at Yahoo!, has been elected to serve on Intel's board of directors. The company also announced that John Browne, an Intel director since 1997, is retiring from the board.

"We're extremely pleased to have Susan Decker join the Intel board," said Craig Barrett, Intel chairman. "Susan's extensive business background, leadership and understanding of the technology industry will be valuable assets to Intel.

"At the same time, we want to thank John Browne for his years of service on the Intel board. John has been an important contributor to the board for nearly 10 years. His unique insights and perspectives as one of the most successful international business leaders in the world were always highly valued. At a time when Intel was rapidly expanding its international operations John's counsel was especially important. We wish him well in the future."

Decker is a key participant in determining Yahoo!'s business strategy, has operational responsibilities for Yahoo!'s Marketplaces business unit, and is also responsible for managing and setting all aspects of the company's financial and administrative direction within key functional areas including finance, human resources, legal and investor relations. Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2000, Decker held a number of positions with Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette during her 14-year career with the investment banking firm.

Decker received her bachelor's degree from Tufts University with a double major in computer science and economics. She received a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.

IBM Expands Vendor Financing Options for Manufacturers and Suppliers of Non-IBM Equipment, Software and Services

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is expanding its vendor financing scope by offering financing capabilities to non-IBM manufacturers and suppliers in fast-growing industries. IBM Global Financing (IGF), the lending and leasing arm of IBM, will work with these companies to develop working capital financing, inventory financing and extended payment agreements to improve their access to and use of capital to drive incremental customer sales. It is one of the largest extensions of IBM's Global Financing business since the company first began offering equipment leases on IBM PCs and servers in the mid-eighties.

"As companies become more globally integrated and trade efficiencies become more critical, IBM is making a difference by helping manufacturers and suppliers more actively manage their working capital to unlock money trapped in their supply chains," said John Callies, general manager of IBM Global Financing. "IBM is expanding its business scope to provide a platform of commercial and client financing offerings to business partners and other companies to achieve their business goals in both our primary IT domain and in adjacent market spaces."

According to IDC Research Director, Technology Financing & Management Strategies Joseph Pucciarelli, as IT technology continues to grow in sophistication, other types of equipment have become increasingly IT-centric such as point-of-sale devices, medical imaging equipment, and communications hardware. Together, he says they fuel a worldwide-wide leasing and financing market that exceeds $125 billion annually -- an incredible market opportunity by every measure.

Some of the key areas currently being investigated by IBM Global Financing include the Industrial, Communications and Distribution sectors. Through these vendor financing arrangements, IGF will work with manufacturers, suppliers, resellers and other companies to help them create further competitive differentiation and increased business value for their customers.

IBM Global Financing's expansion is representative of similar moves in other parts of the business that are earning the company its leadership position as the "innovator's innovator." IBM is focused on helping clients unlock value across their entire enterprise: For example, through its IBM Global Business Services and IBM Global Technology Services divisions the company is aligning with its business partners to diagnose, design, build and operate business processes for its customers, including supply chain optimization and financing.

IBM Global Financing has traditionally provided financing to resellers and business partners for non-IBM hardware, software and services as part of an IBM solution. In contrast, these new deals extend the reach of IBM's financing arm above and beyond IBM solutions, leveraging the company's multitude of client relationships to add financing offerings that appeal to a wider variety of businesses looking to maximize returns on invested capital, drive sales and provide budgeting flexibility for their clients.

IBM signaled its expansion strategy to the industry recently, through a rapid succession of deals that offer working capital, inventory financing, and end-user leasing to a broader range of non-IBM technology equipment manufacturers and distributors. The deals include agreements with Tech Data, AbsoluteSKY, Juniper Networks and Symbol Technologies.

IBM is best positioned to provide financing expertise to its business partners because of its position as the world's largest IT financier. IBM Global Financing has a worldwide asset base of nearly $31 billion, serving 125,000 clients in more than 40 countries. Since the launch of this division in the mid-eighties it has focused exclusively on helping companies manage their capital structures through leasing, lending and IT disposition initiatives.

"Many existing financiers approach the market from either a customer or supplier viewpoint," says Pucciarelli. "IBM Global Financing, by virtue of its requirement to provide financing for customer solutions, brings a new focus to this marketplace -- solutions financing. This new orientation will undoubtedly challenge the status quo and likely result in a broader range of leasing and financing options for commercial companies worldwide."

About IBM Global Financing

IBM Global Financing (IGF), the financing business segment of IBM and the world's premier single-source provider for multi-vendor IT financing solutions, serves commercial clients ranging from small businesses to more than 90% of the Global Fortune 100. With assets of $31 billion worldwide, IGF provides project financing, commercial financing and asset-recovery services to 125,000 clients in more than 40 countries. Additional information can be found at http://www-03.ibm.com/financing/us/

ENGINEERING.com, IBM and Dassault Systèmes Demonstrate Latest Commitment to Academia

ENGINEERING.com (TSX-V: EGN), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Dassault Systèmes (DS) (NASDAQ: DASTY) (Euronext Paris: #13065) (Paris: DSY) today announced the release of Version 5 Release 17 (V5R17) of CATIA and ENOVIA SmarTeam for the Education market. V5R17 education solutions include CATIA for collaborative product development and ENOVIA SmarTeam for collaborative lifecycle management, both developed by Dassault Systèmes and part of the IBM PLM portfolio.

"The big news for students is the broad increase in functionality in the new CATIA Student Version," said John Hayes, President of ENGINEERING.com. "Now the high-end features that make CATIA the undisputed design leader for industry are included in the CATIA Student Version."

Dr. George Kizner, Chair, Mechanical Engineering at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology, stated, "This new version of the CATIA Student software includes everything students need to complete their assignments from home and enable them to complete their capstone design projects. We also expect that the coolness factor of using the world's leading design software will encourage students to continue to explore their engineering interests on their own time."

There is also good news for educators with the introduction of the Discover configuration, a full-featured suite of CATIA modules aimed at high schools. The Discover configuration is intended to provide a basis for introducing the world's leading design environment to students at an early age. "As a secondary school educator, I was impressed with the power of the new CATIA Discover configuration," said Sharlene Kroneck, Mechanical Drawing Teacher at De La Salle Collegiate High School in Warren, Michigan. "Our students are excited by the fact that they can use the same tools in the classroom that professional engineers use to design cars and aircrafts."

CATIA V5 and ENOVIA SmarTeam are two of the most advanced 3D design and collaborative product data management software suites in the world, respectively. Since 1997, colleges and universities around the world have used IBM technology and curriculum content to implement CATIA V5 training in both graduate and undergraduate programs.

Thus their students can become proficient in the 3D application that has designed almost 50 percent of the cars on the road today and practically every large aircraft in the last 10 years.


About ENGINEERING.com Incorporated
ENGINEERING.com Incorporated (TSX-V: EGN) is the developer of the ENGINEERING.com online resource and business for engineers. ENGINEERING.com offers hosted and deployed engineering software and services to manufacturers, educators and engineering students around the world. The ENGINEERING.com Incorporated head office is located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and can be reached toll-free at 1-866-894-8693, by facsimile at (905) 273-6691 or through the Internet at www.engineering.com


About Dassault Systèmes
As a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Dassault Systèmes brings value to more than 90,000 customers in 80 countries. A pioneer in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systèmes develops and markets PLM application software and services that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance. The Dassault Systèmes portfolio consists of CATIA for designing the virtual product -- SolidWorks for 3D mechanical design -- DELMIA for virtual production -- SIMULIA for virtual testing and ENOVIA for global collaborative lifecycle management, including ENOVIA VPLM, ENOVIA MatrixOne and ENOVIA SmarTeam. Dassault Systèmes is listed on the Nasdaq (DASTY) and Euronext Paris (#13065, DSY.PA) stock exchanges. For more information, visit http://www.3ds.com

SAP Names Niels Theilmann Moller as Vice President of Global Strategy for SME Indirect Channels

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that it has named Niels Theilmann Moller, a business specialist in the small and midsize enterprise (SME) market, as vice president in charge of strategy for its Global SME Indirect Channels organization.

In his new position, Moller is responsible for driving the strategic business planning and growth initiatives for SAP’s indirect channel sales of its SME products—SAP® Business One and mySAP™ All-in-One. His duties include providing strategic guidance on key business initiatives; overseeing analyses of research and trends in the SME market; assessing the current market and future opportunities; and ensuring alignment with SAP’s corporate, market and partner strategies. Moller reports directly to Donna Troy, executive vice president of Global SME Indirect Channels.

Moller’s appointment comes as SAP continues to expand its SME partner channel business, which has been growing rapidly in recent years. At the end of the third quarter 2006, SAP reported more than 2,280 channel partners for SAP Business One and mySAP All-in-One, serving nearly 20,250 SME customers worldwide. The SME space, which is one of the largest and fastest growing segments for software, is one of SAP’s key areas of strategic investment. SAP already has a substantial SME footprint with approximately 65 percent of its worldwide customer base comprising companies in this segment.

Moller gained his experience in strategic business planning throughout 12 years in management positions. He joins SAP from Microsoft, where he served as regional director of developing and executing the vision and strategy for Microsoft’s business towards corporate accounts in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Previously, he had served as regional director for Microsoft’s small and midsize business (SMB) efforts in Eastern and Central Europe. Moller joined Microsoft with the acquisition of Navision, where he served as general manager, responsible for developing emerging markets.

Moller holds a master’s degree in business administration and marketing as well as a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and has expanded his skills continuously through various executive programs at INSEAD and Wharton Business Universities.

MSFT: Microsoft and Sprint Collaborate on Mobile Search

Microsoft Corp. and Sprint Corp. today announced a strategic alliance through which the companies will develop and deliver a range of innovative new service offerings for Sprint’s business and consumer customers. The first consumer offering in this collaboration enables Sprint customers to use Windows Live™ Search for mobile on their wireless phones to conveniently search location-based content from the Internet, such as nearby stores and restaurants, as well as Sprint’s catalog of ring tones, games, screen savers and related services. The service also provides new opportunities for highly relevant and targeted local advertising, which will benefit businesses and consumers alike.

“Microsoft and Sprint share a vision that mobility is about helping customers access the information they need while on the go. The new alliance will deliver on that vision for consumers and businesses,” said Mark Schweitzer, chief marketing officer at Sprint. “By adding Windows Live Search for mobile to Sprint devices, customers now carry with them a depth of relevant local search information, in addition to quick and easy access to their favorite Sprint content. Microsoft’s innovation in search and advertising makes them a logical choice for us to work with to realize this vision.”

The new Sprint mobile search service powered by Windows Live aims to provide one-stop access to relevant online content associated with a given keyword or phrase. For example, consumers who search for “sports” on their wireless phone can search all of Sprint’s content relating to sports, such as ringtones, wallpapers and applications with “sports” in the title, as well as local information available online such as business listings for sports stores, maps, directions and relevant advertisements from local businesses. The service is immediately available at no additional cost to Sprint PCS VisionSM and Sprint Power VisionSM subscribers on all currently available data-capable phones, along with many popular older models.*

“In recent years the search box has fundamentally changed the way people interact with the Internet, but we have only just begun to scratch the surface for what search and live Internet services can do in the mobile space,” said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “Today’s announcement is a positive step forward in enhancing the mobile search experience for consumers and advertisers alike, by putting locally relevant information in the hands of consumers. And with Sprint’s strong history of enabling Internet services on phones and Microsoft’s expertise in delivering software plus services, we are excited about the opportunities this alliance can bring to further promote live services across devices that help people get the information they want, when they want it, where they are.”

Windows Live Search for mobile combines Microsoft® Windows Live Local Search features, such as maps and directions, with capabilities allowing the indexing and discovery of highly relevant mobile content. This approach brings simplicity for users by delivering search results grouped in useful categories and in a format appropriate for a user’s specific mobile device.

The location-based offering available today from Sprint and Microsoft requires users to input their location by entering their ZIP code, address, or city and state. Future versions of the service are planned to enable consumers to give permission to automatically locate them and show the nearest businesses that match their search.

Companies Target New Integrated Services in Strategic Alliance

Today’s mobile search release is evidence of the success Microsoft and Sprint expect to continue in developing integrated solutions that bring together products and services from both companies, and which target business and consumer subscribers.

“Sprint is excited about the successful collaboration with Microsoft thus far. Besides mobile search for the consumer, our business customers are benefiting significantly from the ease and enhanced functionality of Windows Mobile 5.0 as well as robust managed security solutions based on Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services,” said Susan Nelson, vice president of strategic alliances, Sprint. “This holistic relationship aligns our companies in joint development, marketing and sales efforts, which allows us to move quickly to combine our expertise and deliver innovative solutions to our customers.”

Future initiatives in the alliance will explore leveraging new Microsoft technologies in the development of a differentiated portfolio of rich and seamless information experiences for Sprint customers. The service aggregation enabled through Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework will help to reduce integration costs and accelerate time to market as the two companies introduce new revenue-generating services that marry traditional telecommunications offering with Web services, from Windows Live beyond.

About Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks serving more than 51 million customers at the end of third quarter 2006; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and an award-winning and global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com

About MSN and Windows Live
MSN® attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live, a new set of personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Windows Live is available at http://www.live.com. MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx.

MSFT: Microsoft Launches Nationwide Contest for Most Innovative Small-Business Idea

Microsoft Corp. today announced the Ultimate Challenge, a nationwide search for the most creative small-business idea in the country. The contest, which is live at http://www.ideawins.com, has been designed to spur the imagination and spirit of entrepreneurism that drives small businesses. The contest also supports the recent launch of Microsoft® Office Accounting Express 2007, Microsoft’s newest financial management solution that was released as a free download to help home-based and early startup businesses manage their finances. The winner — the business with the most innovative business idea — will receive $100,000 in business startup money, a Manhattan-area storefront for one year rent-free, and infrastructure and software to help run the business.

“We know there are lots of great ideas out there from people just waiting to start their own business, and we want to make their dream come true,” said Rajat Taneja, general manager of Small Business Applications and Services at Microsoft. “The Ultimate Challenge is all about getting entrepreneurs to take steps toward living their dream and pursuing the spirit of Americana. The idea behind this contest is to galvanize entrepreneurs into action and make sure they have the right tools, such as Office Accounting Express, to translate their vision into reality.”

Starting today Microsoft will review applications received through the http://www.ideawins.com Web site or submitted in person at upcoming Ultimate Challenge events. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 31, 2007. A three-judge panel will review the highest scoring applications to determine the four finalists who will be announced in February, and the winner will be chosen in March. Submissions will be judged and scored on the following criteria: marketing approach, financial and logistic feasibility, originality, and public interest. Each category will have a point value of 25 points, and the total will determine the final score. The top scoring submissions will then be reviewed by the judges with a new scoring section — a vote from the public worth 25 points.

As part of the nationwide search, Microsoft will deploy the Ultimate Challenge Van, an RV tour that will begin its journey in Times Square on Nov. 28 and make stops in Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago and Atlanta through January. The Ultimate Challenge Van will be a destination where contestants can go to submit their applications and meet Microsoft representatives and successful local business leaders to help finalize their http://www.ideawins.com contest submission.

The four contest finalists will be revealed in February to the public, which can then log on to the http://www.ideawins.com Web site to vote for the final winner who will receive the prize package.

About Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007

Office Accounting Express 2007 consists of desktop software and seven integrated online services, designed in collaboration with industry leaders. Together, the software and services will enable businesses to harness the power of the Internet to sell products online, send invoices and receive payments electronically, process payroll, run credit reports, collaborate with their accountant, and more all from within their accounting application. The Office Accounting Express software will be available for free* while premium services are available at a charge. Office Accounting Express is available on http://www.ideawins.com

CSCO: Cisco Authorizes Up To $7 Billion In Additional Stock Repurchases

Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, announced that at a regularly scheduled meeting of its board of directors today, the board authorized up to $7 billion in additional repurchases of its common stock in addition to the remaining authorized amount of $3.1 billion. Cisco's board had previously authorized up to $40 billion in stock repurchases. There is no fixed termination date for the repurchase program.

"We continue to believe in our repurchase program as a way to optimize the value to our shareholders," said Dennis Powell, Chief Financial Officer, Cisco. "Today, our share repurchase program allows us to return cash to our shareholders, while at the same time provides the flexibility to aggressively invest in the business for additional growth and differentiation, which we believe is good for both our customers and our shareholders."

Since the inception of the repurchase program in September 2001 through the close of Cisco's first quarter of fiscal year 2007 on October 28, 2006, the company had repurchased and retired approximately 2.0 billion shares of common stock at an average price of $18.51 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $36.9 billion.

Dell to Announce Preliminary Results for Third Quarter Fiscal 2007 by End of November

Dell said today it intends to announce its preliminary results for its fiscal third quarter by the end of this month. The move from the originally scheduled date of November 16 reflects the level of complexity the company is facing in the preparation of its preliminary results. This complexity arises out of the ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the company’s Audit Committee into certain accounting and financial reporting matters, and the fact the company has not filed its Form 10-Q for the second fiscal quarter. When the company does announce earnings it will be in the form of a press release only.

In addition, the company said that future earnings announcements will be moved back by approximately one week versus Dell’s prior schedule.

The company also announced it has been informed that the SEC has entered a formal order of investigation. The delay in announcing earnings is not related to that development. Dell continues to cooperate with the SEC, and is committed to resolving all issues in connection with the investigation and regaining compliance with all SEC filing requirements as soon as possible

SUNW: Sun Technology Powers World's Top Performing Supercomputers

At Supercomputing 2006, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that Sun technology is powering ten of the world's highest-performing supercomputers, as determined by the TOP500 Organization (www.top500.org). Sun doubled its presence on the prestigious ranking, as compared to the TOP500 list released at Supercomputing 2005, with five new entries including the Mississippi State University (MSU) High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2), Sun Solution Center for HPC (high performance computing) and Sun Grid Compute Utility. Today, the MSU HPC2 installation represents Sun's largest HPC cluster based on the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), the most advanced OS on the planet.


"Sun is back in HPC in a big way as evidenced by its increased presence in the TOP500 list," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group at Sun Microsystems. "Sun offers the highest performing x64 systems and industry-leading multi-core technology, which is accelerating its impact in the demanding HPC market. In conjunction with our partners, AMD and NEC, Sun is able to provide the critical processing power required for the world's most compute-intense applications while keeping total cost of ownership at a minimum."

Highlights of Sun's entries on the TOP500 list include:

• Tokyo Institute of Technology(Tokyo Tech) - TSUBAME, the supercomputer at Tokyo Tech, increased its compute power with a performance of 47.38 trillion floating point operations per second (teraFLOPS) as compared to the June 2006 TOP500 list. Tokyo Tech is one of the world's leading technical institutes and TSUBAME combines Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers with 10,480 AMD Opteron processor cores, totaling 45 teraFLOPS; Sun and NEC storage technologies; and NEC's integration expertise. Using the Sun N1 System Manager and N1 Grid Engine software, the system is provisioned to support the Solaris 10 OS as well as the Linux operating environment.


• Mississippi State University(MSU) High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2) - The HPC2 at MSU has installed a 2,048 processor computing cluster, named Raptor, which is more than four times faster than the most powerful system previously housed at the site, an IBM model called Maverick. MSU's new high-performance computing cluster is the largest Solaris HPC win to date with a peak performance of more than 10 trillion calculations per second. The implementation was built, delivered and installed through the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program and includes more than 500 Sun Fire X2200 M2 servers powered by next-generation AMD Opteron processors.



• University of Southern California - The University of Southern California (USC) Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) added 512 of Sun's dual-core Sun Fire servers to its powerful supercomputer cluster. The new x64 servers are in addition to the 360 dual-core Sun Fire servers that USC has already deployed. The USC supercomputing server cluster currently is ranked the 41st fastest supercomputer in the world on the TOP500 list.



• Sun Solution Center for High Performance Computing (HPC) - The Sun Solution Center for HPC in Hillsboro, Oregon is a state-of-the-art benchmarking and solution facility where Sun's HPC customers can "kick the tires" on compute clusters based on x64 technology. HPC experts are on site to assist with over 12.5 teraFLOPS of compute capacity.



• Sun Grid Compute Utility - The Sun Grid Compute Utility at Network.com is powered by the Solaris 10 OS and Sun Fire x64 servers, and is the world's first true compute utility providing access to high performance compute resources over the Internet. Sun Grid software is a pay-as-you-go utility available for the predictable and all-inclusive price of $1/CPU per hour with no long-term contract.
  

For more information about all Sun entries on the Top500 list, please visit http://top500.org/list/2006/11/100

IBM Open Source Application Server Gains Support of More Than 600 Partners in Six Months

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that more than 600 independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators have joined IBM's WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Community Edition partner initiative since it was launched just six months ago. WAS Community Edition is IBM's open source application server based on Apache Geronimo.

As a direct result of this initiative, more than 200 ISVs have developed and introduced new software applications that support WAS Community Edition, while more than 250,000 copies of WAS Community Edition have been downloaded.

The WAS Community Edition partner initiative is aimed at helping business partners reduce costs and grow revenue when supporting open source technologies. IBM assists partners with free sales, marketing and technical support to use WAS Community Edition to provide departmental and small- and medium-sized customers with an open source foundation for a service oriented architecture (SOA) that can scale to meet business needs. Based on core open source technology from the Apache Geronimo application server, WAS Community Edition and related subscription support services provide flexible and affordable infrastructure software to organizations that need a reliable alternative to traditional commercial software offerings.

"As an open source application server, WebSphere Application Server Community Edition fits perfectly into our business model," said David Richards, CEO of Centric CRM, a developer of enterprise class open source CRM software. "As an open source product backed by IBM, WAS Community Edition opens up new business opportunities for us. We have already closed business with a Fortune 500 company running Centric CRM on IBM's open standards middleware stack including WAS Community Edition."

"We've reached this milestone in just six months because customers are choosing WAS Community Edition to reduce open source integration costs while receiving world-class support from IBM," said Robert LeBlanc, general manager, IBM WebSphere. "The accelerating industry momentum behind WAS Community Edition represents customers of all sizes and industries."

WAS Community Edition, which is free to download and use, pre-integrates Apache Tomcat with several of the most commonly used open source components, such as web services, security, authentication, messaging and web tier clustering.

As part of this initiative, Business Partners have access to free, personalized WAS Community Edition technical enablement assistance, IBM Sales Connection, for instant access to WAS Community Edition sales specialists who can help them close deals faster; and lead generation packages.

For additional information and to download WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/community/

Siemens assists fraud investigation and pledges close cooperation with police

Police and prosecutors today searched about 30 Siemens locations in Munich and Erlangen. As the state prosecutor’s office announced, a still undetermined number of individual acts of fraud are suspected at the company’s fixed networks business. At issue, according to current information, is an amount in the low double-digit million euro range. A total of six former and current company employees are suspected in the case. Siemens is a witness.

Details cannot be provided because the investigation is ongoing. Siemens would like to make it quite clear at this juncture that it is very interested in having the matter completely cleared up. The company is therefore fully supporting the police investigation.

In the context of this incident, Siemens would like to point out that it has Business Conduct Guidelines that provide company-wide principles for conducting business that are mandatory for all employees. These guidelines include clear instructions for employees to obey the law and are a component of every employee contract.

IBM Introduces Linux and Grid Implementation Service Products

IBM (NYSE: IBM), the world's leading information technology (IT) services provider, today introduced service products to help customers maximize the value of implementing Linux and Grid computing technologies. IBM's new Implementation Services for Linux Service Product and Grid and Grow Express Implementation Service Product both utilize a new IBM Research-designed automated web-based tool that can significantly reduce implementation time and expense.

For Linux implementations, the new IBM Implementation Services for Linux Service Product provides clients access to affordable services that enable rapid and consistent implementation of the Novell SUSE Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system (OS). The service product includes:

• IBM Implementation Services for Linux distributions - designed to enable faster implementation of the Linux OS on all IBM System x, System p, System i, System z and BladeCenter servers.


• IBM Implementation Services for Linux server consolidation - designed to reduce costs and enhance reliability by providing clients with a consolidated Linux server environment for dispersed applications and data.


• IBM Implementation Services for Linux high performance computing clusters - helps clients optimize the computing power of their IBM System x and BladeCenter server clusters.

The IBM Research-designed web-based tool can accelerate Linux implementation times by up to 30 percent. The tool incorporates industry application intelligence and best practice knowledge from thousands of client engagements to ensure consistent implementation around the world.
For Grid implementations, the new Grid and Grow Express Implementation Service Product can help clients quickly and cost-effectively incorporate readily-scalable grid computing solutions to achieve greater usage of existing resources, increased application performance, flexibility and resiliency. The service product includes hardware, software and services and can be incorporated into current storage and server infrastructures. Middleware is selected by industry application, to ensure that the solution is architected for a particular industry.

"Thanks to the unique benefits of Grid & Grow, our entire project was completed in less than one month," said Professor Zhu Qiao Ming, dean of the Computer School at Soochow University, the oldest private university in Taiwan. "The choice of IBM hardware ensures a stable, scalable storage environment that improves data availability without excessive costs."

The new service products represent the latest step in IBM's strategy to deliver traditional labor-based technology services in a manner more similar to the delivery of technology products.

"These new Linux and grid service products will enable organizations to take advantage of emerging technology benefits like strong security, high reliability, better flexibility and lower cost of ownership," said Tom Ready, vice president, IBM Server Services. "IBM is uniquely positioned to utilize highly-skilled remote and on-site professionals along with new web-based automation tools to help businesses minimize transition time and costs."

IBM delivers industry-leading server services in four areas:

• Comprehensive portfolio of server optimization services - Ranging from server assessments to complete end-to-end optimization solutions, IBM can tap into an extensive portfolio and broad global skill base to deliver best-of-breed services.


• Product implementation services - Provides IBM and non-IBM product implementation and migration services that supplement clients' in-house resources, while providing access to IBM's deep skill base.


• Server managed services - IBM brings together technology leadership, skills and expertise to offer clients the processes, tools and methodologies to manage collaborative and innovative business environments without a significant up-front investment.


• Infrastructure solutions - IBM's IT Resource Optimization solution helps create a dynamic IT infrastructure that is easier and less expensive to manage, upgrade and run. Virtualization, provisioning and orchestration technologies are applied to IT resources and workloads, resulting in optimized resource usage, reduced complexity and cost, and improved response time.

The new service products are available immediately worldwide from IBM Global Services. IBM has more than 7,000 highly skilled Linux and Grid professionals worldwide.
For more information about the new service products from IBM, go to: www.ibm.com/services/spotlight

U.S. Department of Energy and IBM to Collaborate in Advancing Supercomputing Technology

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that its Office of Science, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) will share the cost of a five-year, $58 million research and development (R&D) effort to further enhance the capabilities of the fastest computer in existence. Under the agreement, scientists from two of the DOE's national laboratories are teaming with IBM to further develop supercomputer technology to increase America's ability to deliver answers to scientific problems and to safeguard the nation's nuclear stockpile. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman congratulated Argonne and Livermore lab scientists at a meeting of DOE lab directors today.

"Supercomputing is essential to maintaining and extending America's economic competitiveness," said DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman. "This R&D effort will give us the capability to advance science and business with unprecedented speed, performance and efficiency."

A key goal of the R&D effort is to produce a software environment that enables scientific exploration atop an architecture that can scale to hundreds of thousands of low-power CPU cores. Some other specific examples of scientific problems in the national interest include:

- reinvigorating nuclear power technologies;
- speeding genome sequencing;
- modeling environmental and climate changes; and
- deepening the understanding of genetic and biological processes.


The work will be performed by scientists at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) working together with computer and software designers from IBM. NNSA and The Office of Science will each contribute $17.5 million and IBM will contribute $23 million.
"Supercomputers are crucial to the continued success of the NNSA's science-based efforts to keep the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile safe, secure and reliable without underground testing," said NNSA Administrator Linton F. Brooks. "Computing at these scales will enable predictive simulations that allow researchers to understand how complex physical, chemical and biological systems behave over time. Previously, it was only possible to get brief snapshots on a smaller scale."

"IBM is committed to pushing the boundaries of deep computing in the service of important national goals," said Tilak Agerwala, Vice President of Systems, IBM Research. "This partnership with Livermore and Argonne National Lab will drive innovations in ultrascale computing and demonstrate that the Blue Gene approach can effectively scale far beyond any machine yet devised."

"This agreement will help us design computer architectures to attack key scientific problems, said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, DOE Under Secretary for Science. "It offers a tremendous step forward."

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. The Office of Science supports a diverse portfolio of research at more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide, manages 10 world-class national laboratories with unmatched capabilities for solving complex interdisciplinary scientific problems, and builds and operates the world's finest suite of scientific facilities and instruments used annually by more than 19,000 researchers to extend the frontiers of all areas of science.

Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, reliability and performance of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing; works to reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.nnsa.doe.gov for more information.

Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a national security laboratory, with a mission to ensure national security and apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

Finibanco and IBM Sign Services Contract

Finibanco and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a 10-year services contract. IBM will manage Finibanco's core banking information infrastructure, providing the bank with more efficient and effective IT services, and reducing costs. Finibanco is a player in the Portuguese private banking sector.

The new contract gives IBM responsibility for the operation, management and administration of a significant part of the bank infrastructure, the hardware and software supporting Finibanco's critical applications, as well as related business recovery and continuity services. The infrastructure platform supports the core bank legacy applications and new Services Orientated Architecture.

The agreement is part of Finibanco's technology optimization strategy and will allow the bank to focus on high-priority areas, such as the implementation of a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) awarded to IBM in the past year, and provide greater value to customers with increased efficiency.

"Our project is focused on satisfaction for Finibanco's clients, employees and stakeholders. To accomplish this, we need to invest in the optimization of our resources and management. IBM has proved to be the right partner to support the bank in this task, not only for the mutual trust both institutions have earned in the past few years, but also for IBM's proven innovative competencies," says Armando Esteves, Finibanco Administrator.

From a business transformation scope, IBM services will allow the bank to:

Obtain a more rationalized IT cost structure, with an expected
significant reduction in costs over the next 10 years.
Be more agile as it scales up for expected growth in the business.
Benefit from a wide and advanced range of IT management processes which would be expensive to implement individually.
Finibanco S.A. is part of the Portuguese Finibanco Holding SGPS, in the Vicaima Group. The bank has a network of 120 branches and focuses mostly on the retail banking sector.

"Banks are faced with the challenge of updating legacy core banking systems in response to regulatory, competitive and cost pressures," said José Joaquim de Oliveira, Country General Manager, IBM Portugal. "We are pleased to team with Finibanco to accelerate the transformation of their core banking systems and help them meet their cost reduction and profit objectives."

IBM and Finibanco have a strong on-going relationship. IBM has been the major supplier of Finibanco's IT infrastructure since the bank was established in 1993.

The agreement was signed in October 2006, and work on the project is already in progress.

MSFT: Microsoft Advances Data Platform for Customer Gain

Microsoft Corp. today announced upcoming product milestones designed to help information workers, IT professionals and developers manage data complexity. In his keynote speech at the 2006 Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Data and Storage Platforms, detailed priorities for Microsoft’s data platform. Focusing on support for dynamic application environments, automation and continuous availability, beyond relational and end-to-end insight, Flessner announced the upcoming release of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Visual Studio® Team Edition for Database Professionals, as well as the immediate availability of the Release Candidate (RC) of SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition.

“With just 12 months on the market, we’ve been humbled by the industry momentum for SQL Server 2005. Customer and independent software vendor adoption of our data platform has resulted in more than 30 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the last quarter alone,” Flessner said. “The innovation, tools and guidance we’re announcing today are designed to help customers as they continue to build the next generation of business solutions on the SQL Server platform.”

Optimize Data Virtually Any Time, Anywhere

Today’s business is challenged by a new generation of occasionally connected and data-intensive applications. Customers have asked for a solution that meets the requirements of this new breed of application while being able to increase developer productivity and better manage, scale and drive insights from their business. To help address these needs, Microsoft announced the following updates designed to provide tighter integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system, additional flexibility for developers, and better process guidelines and support for embedded, mobile and occasionally connected environments:

• The availability of the community technology preview (CTP) of SP2 for SQL Server 2005 delivers key updates, including data compression, increased business intelligence functionality, security updates relating to Common Criteria, manageability enhancements, support for Windows Vista™ and optimization for the 2007 Microsoft Office system environment. More details about SP2 are available. The SP2 November CTP can be downloaded immediately.

• The RC of SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition is a new offering for essential relational database functionality in a compact footprint. By sharing a familiar SQL syntax and common ADO.NET programming model with other SQL Server editions, SQL Server Compact Edition allows developers and administrators to apply their existing skills and be immediately productive while building and supporting the next generation of applications. The RC is available via Web download.

• The release to manufacture date for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals has been set for Nov. 30, 2006. Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals provides a foundation for change management, development, testing and deployment of databases through integrated functionality that enables database developers and administrators to be more productive, reduce risk and drive quality. More information can be found on MSDN.

• Plans to provide process guidance for database professionals are included in the Microsoft Solutions Framework. This process guidance is the first of its kind in the industry and demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to making the database professional a full-fledged participant in the application life cycle.

“Our customers rely on us to deliver a seamless user experience and enterprise-class availability with our online software services,” said David P. Smith, chief technology officer, ServiceU Corp. “With its ability to scale, SQL Server 2005 helps us deliver outstanding performance. We have also made it easier and more productive for our development team to rapidly deliver our next wave of high performing, data-driven applications. Our business depends on enterprise-class databases, which is why we chose SQL Server 2005.”

VZ: Verizon Business Delivers Next-Generation Web Conferencing Service to Help Enhance Productivity and Business Performance

Verizon Business, a leading global provider of audio, Web and video conferencing services, today announced the launch of Verizon Advanced Net Conference, a service that helps enhance productivity and business performance by making it easier and faster for employees to collaborate via the Internet.

Building on the comprehensive Verizon Business suite of Web conferencing services -- including Reserved Net Conference, Instant Net Conference and Customized Net Conference -- Advanced Net Conference enables workers to schedule future Web meetings or initiate them quickly through Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. Advanced Net Conference is an effective tool for handling all aspects of uniting people for teamwork and is particularly suited for engineers, architects, lawyers, marketing professionals and individuals who typically work on different project teams.

"This next generation of our successful Net Conference product is meeting a growing demand and desire for virtually 'anytime, anywhere' meetings," said Tom Roche, vice president of marketing for Verizon Business' network voice and data services. "Whether we're helping to break down geographic boundaries for employees of multinational companies or helping to quickly assemble government workers in response to an unforeseen situation, Verizon Business continues to harness the latest collaborative technology to help enhance teamwork and productivity for our customers."

Frost & Sullivan, in its "World Web Conferencing Markets" study (#F764-64), published in October, named Verizon Conferencing as the leading Web conferencing reseller services provider.

Earlier this year, Verizon Business sponsored a Frost & Sullivan study, "Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance," that determined that collaboration is a key driver of business performance. The study - which defined collaboration as an interaction between culture and technology such as audio and net conferencing, e-mail and instant messaging -- also found that professionals around the world see their collaborative efforts as highly productive and believe that collaboration through communications technologies can provide a competitive advantage. Full details of the report can be found at http://newscenter.verizon.com/kit/collaboration/.

Through Advanced Net Conference's inherent flexibility, companies can reap the integrated benefits of virtually all vendor features and functions, while benefiting from the rich services of Verizon Conferencing. Features include:

Scheduling and joining features, including integration with Microsoft Office Outlook.


A reduced ramp-up time for accessing Web conferencing services.


The power to take advantage of world class Web conferencing services -- Microsoft Office Live Meeting and WebEx.


Detailed online invoicing to allow users to track usage.
Verizon Business, through its expansive global network, is a leading provider of conferencing and collaboration services, enabling organizations to conveniently and effectively collaborate, virtually anytime, anywhere, and helping them improve response time and productivity, without the costs associated with business travel. With more than 20 years' experience delivering conferencing services, Verizon Business is a pioneer in the conferencing business. The company today handles millions of meetings a month, offering the convenience of one-stop shopping and a wide range of global customized products and services, including audio, video and net conference services, IP-based services and some of the most advanced meeting tools available today.

VZ: Verizon Business Is Recognized by Frost & Sullivan as a Leader in VoIP and Conferencing Services

Verizon Business has been recognized by Frost & Sullivan, a leading industry analyst firm, as an IP leader delivering some of the most innovative voice- over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) services and capturing the leading market share among Web conferencing reseller service providers.

Frost & Sullivan has selected Verizon Business to receive the 2006 North American Enterprise VoIP Services Customer Value Enhancement Award. In addition, the firm recently published a report naming Verizon Business as the leading Web conferencing reseller services provider.

"Verizon Business continues to deliver compelling IP-based solutions for the enterprise market," said Lynda Starr, senior analyst, IP communications, for Frost & Sullivan's information and communication technology services. "This sort of focus is essential for service providers to effectively compete by addressing the IP transformation under way today. Businesses benefit from working with a provider that can translate the new capabilities afforded by IP into applications that will enhance business' day-to-day operations and productivity."

Tom Roche, vice president of marketing for Verizon Business' network voice and data services, said: "This recognition by Frost & Sullivan reinforces our IP leadership in delivering next-generation services for large-business and government customers. "We'v