AMD Introduces More Choice to the AMD LIVE! PC Digital Media Solution

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the availability of new AMD LIVE!™ PCs from Alienware and Dell, expanding the selection of popular, easy-to-use PCs designed to help simplify today’s digital lifestyle. The AMD LIVE! PC is a full-featured media center computer powered by the award-winning AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor and created to enrich consumers’ experiences when enjoying digital movies, music and photos throughout the home and on the go.

AMD also introduced additions and enhancements to the AMD LIVE!™ Entertainment Suite, a collection of valuable services and applications designed to enhance the PC experience. Three exciting new software applications – AMD LIVE! Communicator, AMD LIVE! Games and AMD LIVE! Kid Rocket – have been added to the Entertainment Suite, expanding an already substantial software bundle.

“The AMD LIVE! experience continues to generate momentum and excitement as an even broader selection of manufacturers offer AMD LIVE! PCs worldwide,” said Joe Menard, corporate vice president of AMD’s Consumer Business. “Consumers have embraced the smarter choice for simple digital media enjoyment, as evidenced by the growing market demand for AMD LIVE! PC solutions.”

Dell has recently announced a powerful new Dimension media center PC with AMD LIVE! technology.

“As a leading supplier of high-performance and multimedia computers, Dell delivers innovative technology and services that consumers trust and value,” said Joe Curley, Dell director of Dimension and XPS desktop product marketing. “Innovative technologies like AMD LIVE! delivered on Dimension PCs demonstrate how dual-core technology empowers customers to access and manage their music, movies, and photos where and when they want."

This week at the DigitalLife 2006 event, Alienware is expected to provide technology demonstrations of the Alienware DHS high-definition media center, a sleek new AMD LIVE! PC design featuring a high-power, integrated home theater amplifier from D2Audio Corporation, and graphics powered by the Microsoft Windows "Vista Ready" NVIDIA nForce 430 with GeForce 6150 graphics to enable high-definition video playback.

“Our new DHS media center with AMD LIVE! technology powerfully demonstrates Alienware’s commitment to the concept that the digital living room is quickly becoming a reality,” said Frank Azor, senior vice president of Alienware’s Product Group. “Cool and sleek design, which is core to Alienware’s DNA, complements AMD’s dual-core technology, resulting in an entertainment solution that is perfectly suited for the home, den or bedroom.”

“D2Audio is pleased to be an integral part of the sophisticated new AMD LIVE! PC from Alienware,” said Brian Wong, chief executive officer and president of D2Audio. “The sleek all-in-one form factor with its high-quality internal D2Audio® Intelligent Digital Amplifier™ has great consumer appeal.”

AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite
To help enrich the experience of AMD LIVE! PC customers, AMD designed the AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite to be an open platform capable of working with as many existing consumer electronics devices as possible. AMD works closely with innovative software companies to help make their applications as innovative, intuitive and reliable as possible. Because many of these applications are compute intensive, they are well-suited to the capabilities of an AMD LIVE! PC.

New software applications in the Entertainment Suite include:

AMD LIVE! Communicator powered by SightSpeed offers state-of-the-art video and voice communications over the Internet, allowing families and friends to stay connected no matter where they live.
AMD LIVE! Games powered by WildTangent delivers a fun gaming experience with a wealth of exciting online and downloadable games.
AMD LIVE! Kid Rocket Web Browser helps parents rest easy by offering children the ability to play online games and explore the Internet in a controlled and safe environment.

“Since our introduction, experts consistently have agreed that SightSpeed is the leading provider of personal video and voice communications services, delivering the highest quality and most true to life video experience around,” said Peter Csathy, SightSpeed’s chief executive officer. “Video communication has long been thought of as the next big step in communications. With the new capabilities and power found in the AMD LIVE! solution, this means it’s here now, and ready for prime time use and acceptance.”

“Powering AMD LIVE! Games is a great honor and a strong endorsement of our solution,” said Alex St. John, chief executive officer of WildTangent. “The WildTangent Game Console plus our revolutionary WildCoins™ payment system enable the search, discovery and enjoyment of hundreds of the most popular games in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the normal costs, for gaming enthusiasts worldwide.”

“The AMD LIVE! Kid Rocket Web Browser is a simple and effective way for children to safely surf the Internet by allowing them to visit only those Web sites programmed into the browser,” said Greg Killam, chief executive officer of Crash Software. “We believe KidRocket is a valuable tool that will bring AMD LIVE! PC customers some peace of mind, knowing that their children can be protected from Internet predators and at the same time, they can protect their important files from click-happy little fingers.”

In addition to new software and services, AMD has upgraded the existing AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite. For example, new features in the AMD LIVE! Media Vault powered by Streamload include automatic file backup to an online account and file synchronization between networked PCs and devices. Consumers now have the ability to easily share digital files such as photos or home movies between a desktop and notebook PC, for example, or between their home and workplace.

“AMD LIVE! Media Vault’s new features make it even easier for consumers to preserve their precious photos, videos and music without the hassle of manual uploads,” said Steve Iverson, president and chief executive officer of Streamload. “We’re excited that AMD continues to work closely with Streamload to ensure that its customers have access to today’s leading online media technology.”

Availability
Leading OEMs currently offering AMD LIVE! PCs worldwide include Acer, Alienware, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Gateway, HP, Tsinghua Tongfang and ZT Group, among others. The AMD LIVE! Communicator and AMD LIVE! Kid Rocket Web Browser are now available as part of the AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite, which is offered free of charge for AMD customers along with some optional premium services provided by participating software suppliers. AMD LIVE! Games will be available in the near future. For more information, please visit www.amd.com/dlny

About AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processors
AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors offer award-winning AMD64 dual-core performance, security with Enhanced Virus Protection* to help protect valuable files, AMD Digital Media Xpress™ to enable stellar performance and digital media playback quality, and AMD’s Cool‘n’Quiet™ technology to enable a quieter-running system while delivering performance on demand.

About the AMD LIVE! Brand
Created in 2004, the AMD LIVE! brand has promoted top film, broadcast, and music professional artists using AMD64 technology. The AMD LIVE! brand is rooted in the adoption of AMD64 technology by the professional creative community, lifting technology barriers that once stunted artistic expression. The AMD LIVE! brand extends from professional content creation at the speed of inspiration, to best-of-breed computing solutions that help consumers organize, access and enjoy digital movies, photos and music virtually whenever, wherever they want.

SAP Names Tim Cooper as Vice President of Sales for Higher Education Market

SAP Public Services, Inc., a subsidiary of SAP America, Inc., today announced the appointment of Timothy Cooper as vice president of its Higher Education & Research (HE&R) organization. Cooper’s appointment will help SAP better service higher education institutions located in the United States and expand SAP’s footprint in the HE&R market. As vice president of HE&R, Cooper will be responsible for managing and growing sales of the SAP® for Higher Education & Research (SAP for HE&R) portfolio of solutions, providing universities and research institutions with integrated software tools to facilitate research, teaching and study, as well as to manage core processes of campus administration. Cooper will report directly to Rand Blazer, president, SAP Public Services, Inc. The announcement was made at EDUCAUSE 2006, being held in Dallas, Tex., October 9 – 12.

Prior to joining SAP, Cooper spent 15 years at Oracle Corporation, where he most recently served as vice president of sales in the higher education and healthcare markets. He also successfully managed Oracle’s East Coast enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology sales and marketing programs for more than four years as East Coast regional manager. Cooper has also held positions at Systems and Computer Technology, Boudreaux and Associates and Shared Medical Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information science from the University of Pittsburgh.

“Tim has an incredible understanding of the business challenges and opportunities within the HE&R market and his insight will help SAP make sound decisions about current and future market needs,” said Rand Blazer, president, SAP Public Services, Inc. “He’s a team player and proven leader who will help SAP strengthen its position as a leading provider of end-to-end solutions for colleges, universities and research institutions.”

For more information about SAP for Higher Education & Research, please visit: http://www.sap.com/industries/highered/index.epx

Global Forest and Paper Company UPM Selects IBM as Information Technology Delivery Partner

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that UPM, one of the world's leading manufacturers of printing papers, is expanding its business relationship with IBM in a 6-year IT development contract. The agreement was signed on October 5th, and work begins on the project in November 2006.

IBM will manage the completion of UPM's ongoing Supply Chain project, provide Application Management Services for global supply chain applications and support to build the future UPM Supply Chain Application Centre.

IBM has been involved in UPM's Supply Chain program since 2003, supporting UPM with consulting and application implementation services.

"We consider this contract as a major step in our IT strategy implementation. The partnership with IBM gives us the opportunity to establish our global IT delivery model in a short timeframe. Applying the best-practice-model of application management by IBM also gives us the confidence that the future IT delivery model will be efficient and serve our business in the best way possible," says Conrad Frede, Chief Information Officer of UPM.

To support the new service delivery model, IBM will establish a Supply Chain Application Centre together with UPM. A team of 40 UPM IT experts will join IBM to further develop, roll-out and maintain a portfolio of applications that will assist UPM to respond quickly to customer and market changes and help improve the company's supply chain.

"A key challenge for many forest and paper companies is to remain nimble and responsive to their clients' needs in a fiercely competitive environment," says Juha Hulkkonen, Global Business Services Country Manager, IBM Finland. "UPM has an ambitious goal to take their operational effectiveness to new heights amid those challenges. Tapping into IBM's experience in transforming our own supply chain will help pave the way for this important project."

About UPM:

UPM is one of the world's leading forest products groups. The Group's sales in 2005 were EUR 9.3 billion, and it has over 31,000 employees. UPM's main products include printing papers, converting materials and wood products. The company has production plants in 15 countries and its main market areas are Europe and North America. UPM's shares are listed on the Helsinki and New York stock exchanges. www.upm-kymmene.com

New IBM Service Products Tackle Data Center Power and Cooling Challenges

IBM (NYSE:IBM), the leading global services provider, today introduced new service products to help customers combat energy-related crises in their data centers. The service products provide end-to-end capabilities for customers, from identifying requirements, current capabilities and capacities to defining the best options for data centers and other specialized facilities including clean rooms and green or intelligent buildings.


The service products will be available from IBM's Site and Facilities Services unit and 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.
IBM is today introducing five new service products:

• High Density Computing Readiness Assessment -- assists customers to gauge their ability to support high density computing, identify the potential gaps that could jeopardize continuous operations, and develop a plan to resolve identified problems.


• Thermal Analysis for High Density Computing -- identifies and resolves existing and potential heat-related issues that are likely to create outages in existing data centers, and provides options for power savings and future expansion.


• Integrated Rack Solution for High Density Computing -- helps customers design, deploy and manage resilient, flexible racking solutions to take advantage of new technologies within new and existing environments.


• Data Center Global Consolidation and Relocation Enablement -- provides evaluation and plans to help customers save money by consolidating and relocating data centers around the globe by leveraging local IBM Site and Facilities expertise and leading global practices.


• Scalable Modular Data Center for Small and Medium-sized Businesses -- enables customers to install a new data center quickly, using modular building blocks. The capability can be installed in nearly any working environment and provides power, cooling, security and monitoring for a turnkey data center environment.

"IBM's Site and Facilities Services team designed and installed a state-of-the-art data center for our rapidly-growing business," said Rick Siner, director of technical services at Priority Health, a nationally recognized health plan company based in Michigan. "IBM was very easy to work with. We had access to the exact level of resources that we needed, and now, we have the capacity and infrastructure in place to support future growth, on demand."
IBM is already a major worldwide player in the site and facilities business. It draws on the expertise of more than 450 Site and Facilities experts worldwide, who have designed and built more than 30 million square feet (2.8 million square meters) of data center raised floor for its customers and more than 400 data centers in IBM's own facilities worldwide.
IBM's Site and Facilities Services unit delivers leading services in four areas:

• Data Center and Facilities Strategy Services -- identifies data center    requirements, current capabilities and capacities and defines eco-friendly and high resiliency options.


• IT Facilities Assessment, Design and Construction Services -- builds new or helps to optimize existing datacenters.


• IT Facilities Consolidation and Relocation Services -- helps leverage customer savings and redundancy globally.


• Specialized Facilities Services -- provides design and building of intelligent and green buildings, state-of-the-art clean rooms, and trading floors.

"CIOs are facing a power and cooling crisis in their data centers," said Steven Sams, vice president, IBM Site and Facilities Services. "Based on our extensive customer engagements, many data center facilities need to expand, renovate or relocate to meet capacity and operational needs. IBM has a global team of Site and Facilities Services experts in place to help customers assess their risk, determine a path to success, and implement an optimal solution."
The new Site and Facilities Services products are available immediately worldwide from IBM Global Services.
IBM Site and Facilities Services can also be purchased as part of IBM's CoolBlue portfolio of comprehensive hardware and systems-management tools. The CoolBlue portfolio enables clients to better optimize the power consumption, management and cooling of infrastructure at the system, rack and data center levels.
For more information about IBM Site and Facilities Services and the new service products, go to: www.ibm.com/services/spotlight.

Nexxar Group Selects IBM Mainframe & Linux to Propel Business Growth

Financial services company Nexxar Group, Inc. is consolidating more than 80 x86 servers onto an IBM (NYSE: IBM) System z9 Business Class mainframe running Linux to help drive its strategy of acquiring businesses and winning new private label relationships, the companies announced today. Nexxar Group also expects to save 30% per year in related operating costs as a result of switching to the System z9.

Nexxar Group is an "early stage consolidator," meaning that its business model involves acquiring and integrating smaller firms.

The company is relying on the IBM mainframe's unmatched virtualization capabilities to quickly create a secure, custom-tailored computing environment for each "private label" relationship that utilizes Nexxar Group 's money transfer, money order, bill payment and check cashing services. In addition, the mainframe helps enable Nexxar Group's growth-through-acquisition strategy, which requires that the IT environments of newly acquired companies be integrated quickly and efficiently.

"When we need to add a virtual Linux image on the IBM System z9, it's as simple as 'cutting and pasting,'" said Wim De Ridder, Managing Director and CIO, Nexxar Group, Inc. "By contrast, in the x86 world, we would have to add a whole new physical server, plus the software, networking and attendant maintenance. Just as important, since the IBM mainframe was designed from the ground up to be a shared environment, it provides the kind of rock-solid security that we require."

The IBM mainframe streamlines maintenance substantially. The mainframe reduces 75% of the required headcount to maintain the operating environment in comparison with the x86 systems previously on the floor.

On the software side, Nexxar Group has selected IBM's DB2 database on z/OS and is running its core applications on the Integrated Facility for Linux, a specialty processor that optimizes Linux performance. The System z9 Business Class server's extremely high level of capacity utilization -- which can approach 100 percent -- is far superior to the overall utilization of x86 systems, De Ridder added, allowing Nexxar Group to much more efficiently use the server resource it purchases.

"The System z9 mainframe has solved Nexxar Group's problem, one that many growing companies face after they've started down the x86 path -- namely, how do you eliminate the resulting sprawl of servers, with their attendant flood of IT workers and skyrocketing software costs," said Jim Stallings, general manager, IBM System z. "The IBM mainframe offers powerful economic benefits that are delivering significant results for customers running a wide spectrum of new workloads, including Linux applications."

Nexxar Group is backed by FTVentures, a private equity firm focused on software and business services companies and a strategic partner of IBM's Venture Capital Group. FTVentures is Nexxar Group's largest investor and is one of more than 120 key VC firms the IBM Venture Capital Group collaborates with to identify and nurture innovative young companies like Nexxar Group and enable them to put the right solutions in place and successfully evolve their businesses.

"The IBM Venture Capital Group's unique partnership model has allowed us to leverage IBM's deep technical and business resources to help put Nexxar Group in a strong go-to-market position," said Mike Gurevich, technology advisor of FTVentures. "Our relationship with IBM's Venture Capital Group was integral in the planning, testing and deployment of the z9 mainframe at Nexxar."

BEAS: BEA Announces WebLogic Platform 9.2; Delivering the Industry's Most Solid, Unified and Blended Foundation for SOA

BEA Systems, a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced the completion and delivery of WebLogic® Platform 9.2, a suite of software and tools including WebLogic Integration that are designed to provide a unified foundation for BEA’s SOA 360º. In addition, the company also demonstrated further execution on its blended strategy by announcing the general availability of three product updates: BEA Kodo™ 4.1, BEA Workshop™ for WebLogic Platform 9.2 and BEA Workshop Studio 3.2.1.

BEA SOA 360º platform is designed to deliver a unified Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) foundation for business transformation and optimization that can help both to improve cost structures and grow new revenue streams. BEA SOA 360º platform, which spans three product families – BEA Tuxedo®, BEA WebLogic and BEA AquaLogic™ – is uniquely architected with the newly unveiled BEA microService Architecture™ (mSA™). Unlike other “fused,” monolithic, proprietary middleware architectures, BEA SOA 360º platform will be lightweight and based on native SOA standards that help to make it more open, interoperable, embeddable and naturally extensible with third-party development.

“BEA WebLogic Platform is designed to be the industry’s most rock-solid, unified, and blendable platform for Java enterprise applications,” said Wai Wong, executive vice president, products, at BEA Systems. “WebLogic and ‘blended’ form the underpinning of BEA’s SOA 360° vision. BEA can help enable customers to build SOA solutions on the foundation with the best of both commercial and open-source.”

A key component of BEA SOA 360° platform, BEA’s blended approach is designed to allow developers to mix-and-match open-source and commercial software while maintaining a seamless platform for development, deployment, and administration of Java applications and services. This approach is designed to help developers leverage the latest innovations from the open-source community to create next-generation SOA-based solutions.

About BEA Kodo and BEA Workshop products

BEA Kodo 4.1 is designed to provide support for the new Java Persistence API (JPA) developed via the Java Community Process under JSR 220. JPA is a critical underpinning of the new EJB 3.0 specification of the same JSR and can help simplify the process of persisting Java objects to data stores.

Additionally, in BEA Kodo 4.1, the company is basing its JPA implementation on the same packages found in the Apache OpenJPA incubator project. BEA initiated OpenJPA earlier this year when it contributed a substantial portion of its Kodo product to the open-source community under the OpenJPA name. Kodo was among the first generally available products to implement the EJB 3.0 Java Persistence API.

BEA Kodo 4.1 is also designed to provide full support for JDO 2.0, the latest Java Data Objects (JDO) specification. This is designed to offer developers a choice in persisting Java objects to data stores via either JDO 2.0 or JPA.

BEA Kodo 4.1, in addition to supporting current versions of WebLogic Server and other platforms, will be compatible with the new generation of BEA WebLogic Server, available later this year. Additionally, when Apache releases the 1.0 version of OpenJPA, BEA will extend its 24x7 local language production support to cover it, providing a “one-stop support shop” for IT operations managing heterogeneous open-source and Java EE environments.

Marking its first use of the Eclipse Update Manager as a distribution method, BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform 9.2 is releasing an Eclipse update to its IDE Design Views. The product builds upon its existing integration with Eclipse 3.1 and WebTools 1.0 by extending the baseline functionality into new areas such as visual Web service development and enhanced Beehive Page Flow development.

SOA development and Web service enablement can be greatly simplified with new visual development tools that are designed to shorten development time for standards-based Web services. The new Page Flow overview for Beehive Web applications is designed to provide easy developer navigation as well as documentation on complex Page Flows. Version 9.2 exclusively leverages the popular Eclipse Update Manager for distribution.

BEA is also releasing a new version of Workshop Studio. Version 3.2.1 includes the latest open-source updates of Eclipse 3.2.1, Web Tools 1.5.1 and Spring 1.3.4, as well as new tutorials and documentation to designed to help simplify common procedures.

These product releases are just the latest in a series of steps BEA has taken in execution of its SOA 360° vision and blended strategy. Over the last 18 months, BEA has added support and certification of its products on the Spring Framework, moved to an Eclipse-based IDE and tooling environment with its M7 acquisition, became the first software company in the industry to provide Eclipse tools for the EJB 3.0 persistence interface, won the “Best Commercial Eclipse-Based Development Tool” award at EclipseCon, and opened up Kodo’s Java Persistence APIs via OpenJPA. BEA is also a strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation, currently holding two board seats.

Availability

BEA WebLogic Platform 9.2, BEA Kodo 4.1 and BEA Workshop Studio 3.2.1 will be generally available in Q4 CY2006. BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform is shipping via the Eclipse Update Manager. For more information or to download these products, visit http://bea.com/weblogic

BEAS: BEA Systems Announces AquaLogic Business Process Management 5.7; Optimizes Business Processes for SOA

BEA Systems, Inc. today unveiled AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7, the first release since BEA acquired Fuego in March 2006. The new release takes a major step forward in bridging Business Process Management (BPM) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) closer together. SOA remains the most favored approach among IT organizations for managing complexity in large IT environments and achieving business goals rapidly and cost-effectively. AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7 helps business processes tap directly into SOA, by providing seamless browsing, discovery of and dynamic binding to managed services. This capability helps IT separate system complexity from business processes and creates a more flexible infrastructure that increases both business and IT agility.

BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7 also introduces comprehensive support for a global, multi-language approach to business process management, with Unicode certification and localized versions of the designer and modeling environments, and the participant experiences. This helps ensure that large global businesses, with complex, geographically distributed processes, can finally manage those processes across geographies and language barriers within a single, multi-language process management solution. Today, AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7 supports nine languages, including English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, simplified Chinese and Spanish. Customers can easily support additional languages by adding additional resource language bundles.

Additionally, AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7 is designed to offer new capabilities for capturing and leveraging best practices within an intuitive process template repository and a master role directory. Common process patterns can be captured as templates, managed within a central repository and made available for new projects. A master role directory helps ensure that role names are consistently reused across all processes.

“At First Horizon, we have successfully improved service delivery to customers, partners, and investors using the BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite as the primary technology in our process automation framework,” said Robert Salazar, vice president of process management at First Horizon National Corporation. “AquaLogic BPM facilitates collaboration and focus on process performance resulting in improved alignment between information technology and business goals and reduced solution delivery times by up to 30 percent”.

The AquaLogic BPM Suite is a key component of the BEA SOA 360ï‚° platform. BEA SOA 360ï‚° is designed to be the industry’s most unified Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform for business transformation and optimization, helping to improve cost structures and grow new revenue streams.

“At BEA, we believe that BPM is a critical element of SOA. BPM enables integrated creation, execution and optimization of business processes and allows continuous improvement of business processes driven directly from within line of business,” said Mark Carges, executive vice president at BEA Systems. “SOA enables the creation, composition and governance of loosely coupled business services, allows IT to manage complexity while connecting people, processes and systems, and provides a layer of control and governance for IT underneath BPM. Together, BPM and SOA enables business and IT agility.”

New features of AL BPM 5.7 include:

Internationalization and localization for EMEA and APAC: offering localized versions of the designer and modeling tools, and support for local-language deployments
Support for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) v3.0: allowing services used within a modeled process to be discovered and bound to a process from within the design-time modeling environment
Process template repository and role directory: for capturing and leveraging best practices across all BPM projects
Improved Business-Activity-Monitoring (BAM) dashboards with easy drill-down to detailed process activity data
Integration scenarios with WebLogic Integration and AquaLogic Service Bus: offering customers simple integration paths between BEA products; an
Improved documentation, usability and APIs.
For more information, please visit www.bea.com/bpm

BEA also announced the availability of the BEA Business Process Management Lifecycle Assessment and new Process Discovery and Foundation Workshops. These new offerings can help enterprises better understand their current maturity in leveraging business process management methodologies and technologies as well as opportunities to further leverage BPM as part of their overall business and IT strategy. For more information on the BPM Lifecycle Assessment, please visit http://bpmready.bea.com

ALBPM is a key component of the AquaLogic product family, which is part of the BEA SOA 360o platform. Announced last month at BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco, the BEA SOA 360° platform is designed to deliver the industry’s most unified SOA platform and spans all three of BEA’s product families, AquaLogic, WebLogic, Tuxedo and the company’s newest product initiative, BEA Workspace 360°.

BEAS: BEA Strengthens RFID Infrastructure Software for Enterprise-Grade Deployments

BEA Systems, Inc., a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced the forthcoming general availability of BEA WebLogic® RFID Enterprise Server 2.0.

A core component of the BEA WebLogic® RFID product family, BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server is designed to help enable central management of RFID data collected at the “edge” of an enterprise, i.e. inside a retail store, warehouse or data center. With enhanced support for industry standards and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), the 2.0 release of BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server provides a suite of six services that can help manage and coordinate RFID data and edge operations globally. BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 complements the BEA WebLogic® Edge Server and BEA WebLogic® Compliance Express products, and is designed to make it easier to bridge the gaps between people, processes, applications and systems across enterprise and trading partners. BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 can provide customers unprecedented visibility into product movement data, and is designed to help enable them to derive business value more quickly from RFID data collected at the edge.

“Enterprises with large multi-location RFID deployments can face complex management and coordination challenges, such as a retailer with stores and distribution centers across the United States,” said Peter Rieman, executive vice president, T3Ci. “BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 will be one of the first released products based upon the draft EPCIS standard, and is a critical piece of infrastructure software that can help alleviate those challenges by enabling customers to centralize the management of all RFID events, increasing visibility and reducing overall costs.”

“The promise of RFID is to help companies increase visibility within their businesses, generating value in myriad ways from helping manufacturers improve supply chain execution to enabling retailers to increase revenue by reducing out of stocks to helping companies of all kinds cut costs through improved asset management,” said Ken Traub, chief technology officer of RFID and Edge Server Technologies at BEA Systems. “The enhancements in BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 are designed to help users capitalize on their enterprise assets from the network edge back to the data center with superior reliability, scalability and performance.”

BEA WebLogic RFID product family is key component of the BEA SOA 360o platform. Announced last month at BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco, the BEA SOA 360o platform is designed to deliver the industry’s most unified SOA platform and spans all three of BEA’s product families, AquaLogic, WebLogic, Tuxedo and the company’s newest product initiative, BEA Workspace 360°. (See Sept. 19, 2006, press release titled “BEA Announces SOA 360°; Industry’s most unified SOA Platform to transform and optimize business.”)

BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0: Support for EPCIS Standards and SOA

The modular structure of BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 can help enable organizations to select which capabilities are most important to use within their environment, and can help ease integration of the RFID solution with an existing SOA infrastructure. Its enhanced functionality is designed to give users greater operational process visibility and control as well as provide secure, highly-reliable enterprise-grade performance.

New and enhanced services include:
Enhanced RFID event repository that complies with latest Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) standards: A central repository for RFID event data collected across the enterprise. Further demonstrating its commitment to open standards, BEA, together with T3Ci, a leading RFID and analytics and applications company, recently completed successful interoperability testing of EPCIS. Added Dr. Richard Swan, Chief Technical Officer, T3Ci, “During the month of July, T3Ci and BEA performed extensive interoperability testing, including queries across both web services and AS2, both with and without security. We are pleased to report that BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server, performed perfectly as specified and is designed to be fully interoperable with T3Ci using the candidate specification of EPCglobal EPCIS standards.
Master data service: Designed to deliver out-of-the-box pre-defined templates for commonly used types of master data that are customizable to the needs of each customer’s business
Reporting service: Designed to provide instant insight into RFID event data through easy-to-use Web-based reports, including event history, last location seen, missing assets, dwell time, and transit tim
Data exchange with trading partners: Data can be sent to and received from trading partners. The data exchange service is fully compliant with the emerging EPCIS standard, and can provide transport over a variety of protocols including secure transmission via Applicability Statement 2 (AS2), an IETF standard


Availability and Pricing
BEA WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server 2.0 is expected to become available for download beginning Oct. 12, 2006. For information on pricing, please contact your local BEA sales representative. For more information about the BEA WebLogic RFID product family, please visit bea.com/rfid. To see the BEA WebLogic RFID products and solutions in action, register today for BEAWorld 2006 at bea.com/beaworld.

ADBE: Adobe and Tradocs Help Automate Document Processes Across Global Supply Chains

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) and Tradocs (www.tradocs.net ) today announced the availability of a jointly developed solution for the automation of international trade documents within supply chain processes with Intel Corporation. Demonstrated this week at the Sibos Conference in Sydney, Australia, the solution is based on the Tradocs Trade Services Utility (TSU) Connector Suite, Adobe® PDF and the SWIFT1 Trade Services Utility platform, powered by Intel ® Core™ 2 Duo processors for high performance computing.

With this new solution, suppliers, customers and banks can manage their international trade documents more effectively. Now, supply chain partners have the ability to drive compliant workflows for inter-corporate information exchange and routing of trade documents to banks through the SWIFT Trade Services Utility platform utilizing PDF. Any form of document can be converted to PDF within the Tradocs TSU Connector Suite to facilitate the accessibility and tracking of information as it moves through a supply chain.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Adobe and Intel in developing the Tradocs TSU Connector Suite,” said Tony Duggan, CEO, Tradocs. “The solution efficiently transfers data between users and the SWIFT Trade Services Utility platform and offers easy access via Internet for corporate customers - enabling rapid migration to an automated environment.”

The Tradocs TSU Connector Suite is enhanced through the integration of Adobe LiveCycle™ software for electronic forms, process orchestration, and document rights management. As a result, the solution matches corresponding documents within supply chain workflows to ensure a rapid and seamless process, accessible through the ubiquitous Adobe Reader®.

“Banks recognize that the physical supply chain and the financial supply chain need to come together in order to reduce costs. The first step towards addressing this challenge is to move more processes to the electronic realm,” said Anthony Giagnacovo, EMEA finance practice director, Adobe. “A business's ability to trade electronically can be vastly improved through the use of tools that enable the easy, secure exchange of electronic documents. Adobe tools, particularly PDF, sit at the core of this solution.”

“We are delighted to work with Tradocs and Adobe on this supply chain solution. Intel and Adobe are established technology partners, and the addition of Tradocs enables us to position our technologies for this focus area of supply chain,” said Nigel Woodward, director, global financial services, Intel. “Tradocs TSU Connector Suite makes use of optimized Intel Core2Duo infrastructure, and as partners we will explore how the new solution can enable the extension of computing into the supply chain via Intel's leadership in mobile computing.”

Pricing
30-day trial solutions are available to Sibos conference attendees at the Adobe booth (Booth A27). The enhanced Tradocs TSU Connector Suite for Adobe LiveCycle is immediately available at www.tradocs.net. Adobe LiveCycle software is available from Adobe Systems Incorporated, www.adobe.com/products/livecycle

About Tradocs
Tradocs is a global e-document platform that enables businesses to trade electronically by quickly exchanging documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, securely over the Internet. Registration is free and documents are sent on a pay-as-you-go basis, thereby, immediately reducing barriers to adoption. For further information please visit www.tradocs.net

ORCL: Oracle Buys Sunopsis

Oracle today announced plans to enhance its Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings through the acquisition of Sunopsis, a leading provider of heterogeneous data integration products. This acquisition further strengthens Oracle's hot- pluggable commitment to support IT environments by providing broad support for both Oracle and non-Oracle data sources and targets. Sunopsis offers best-of-breed products for data integration through its high performance "Extract Load Transform" (ELT) architecture and its support for a broad range of data sources and target systems.

"Real-time information access, next-generation architectures and more mixed IT environments are driving increased requirements for sophisticated, fast, heterogeneous data integration solutions," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies. "Oracle and Sunopsis have complementary products with a shared focused on delivering the very best data integration products to our customers. We plan to incorporate Sunopsis' high-performance data integration technology into the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family and make the technology an integrated part of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Intelligence (BI), and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions from Oracle."

Financial details were not disclosed.

ERIC: Telstra launches HSDPA network delivered by Ericsson

Ericsson's (NASDAQ:ERIC) customer, Telstra, today switched on Australia's fastest and largest mobile broadband network. The turbo-charged NEXT G(TM), built in a record 10 months, is now live across Australia.

Sol Trujillo, CEO Telstra and Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO Ericsson, switched on the new NEXT G(TM) (3GSM 850 MHz) network with video calls to locations across Australia, including Thursday Island, South Port, Cape Byron and Broome.

Trujillo said Telstra shareholders' AUSD 1 billion investment in the world's geographically largest national 3GSM network delivers unequaled customer reach and speed across the country and is globally acknowledged as a superior spectrum for breadth and depth of coverage.

NEXT G is more than 100 times bigger geographically than any other 3GSM network in Australia, delivering voice and broadband services to 98 percent of the population.

Trujillo said: "This is an exciting day for all Australians, no matter where they live and work. No one else, here or abroad, has built and launched such a far-reaching, high speed, wireless broadband network in less than a year. It is a versatile, high capacity network with head room for higher speeds in the months and years ahead."

"The opportunities are vast, including service improvements in health and education, productivity improvements in business everywhere, and a competitive advantage for Telstra," he added.

Turbo charged with High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), NEXT G is more than 50 times faster than dial-up and up to five times faster than other 3GSM networks. Telstra customers will experience network download speeds averaging 550 kbps to 1.5 Mbps, and peak network speeds of up to 3.6Mbps, increasing up to 14.4Mbps early next year.

Svanberg said Telstra's advanced mobile broadband network was designed and built with an evolution path to support the future technology roadmap. Ericsson expected it to reach peak network speeds of up to 40 Mbps by 2009, in line with the development of global standardization.

"The NEXT G(TM) network's unprecedented scale and scope demonstrates how committed Telstra is to creating new customer experiences that match or surpass the best in the world," he said.

Trujillo said NEXT G(TM) is an integral part of Telstra's plan to bring broadband to all Australians, no matter where they live, and to transform Telstra into a media communications powerhouse.

"It is a fast, simple, interactive and content rich wireless broadband service that integrates the worlds of communication, information and entertainment," he said.

"We have created a unique 'My Place' menu to give our customers easy, 1-click access to nine services and applications that are most relevant to them. With a simple "1-touch, 1-click" our customers can access FOXTEL, Sensis search, BigPond content, music, email, photos, downloads, maps and My Account information."

In an Australian first, customers can:

-- Watch 12 channels of FOXTEL exclusively on their NextG handset, including news, sport, wildlife documentaries, and children's programs, with more to come.

-- Access Telstra's award winning BigPond Mobile service offering entertainment, news, and exclusive content including AFL, NRL, and V8 Supercars

-- Watch Warner Bros. classic movies and the BBC's best television programs on their PCs through the BigPond Movie Download service.

-- Download a music track to both their mobile and computer in 1-click; and

-- Benefit from Telstra's 'locate me' technology which matches their location with their information request through Sensis services such as CitySearch, WhereIs, Trading Post and Yellow Mobile.

As part of the global community of 3GSM operators, serving over two billion users, NEXT G has one of the world's best international roaming footprints. Not only can Telstra customers make voice calls on their Australian NEXT G mobile phone in more than 140 countries, but can access 3G services such as video calling and high speed data in 30 countries.

Telstra customers can make voice calls on their Australian mobile phone in more places while traveling overseas than on any other Australian network.

Next G customers will be able to install a Next G turbo card into their computer, providing high-speed access to the Internet for business, entertainment, or personal applications, such as browsing the web or email.

The Next G turbo card will be especially useful for business customers, permitting high speed data access across Australia and 30 countries around the world, advancing the way enterprises operate, making them more cost effective, productive and internationally competitive.

"Teleworkers at remote locations using wireless broadband and video conferencing will be able to access information traditionally stored in the office almost instantaneously while they are on the road, at their customer's premises or in the back of a taxi heading to the airport," Trujillo said.

Telstra has been working with leading handset manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola, to produce an impressive Next G roadmap of approximately 30 devices that will be available over the next 18 months. At launch we have four mobiles (Samsung A701 and A501, ZTE F850/51 and LGTU500), one PDA (i-mate Jas Jam) and one data card (GT Max), with Motorola next month and Palm releasing soon after.

Telstra and Ericsson will continue to extend network coverage and upgrade software for faster speeds throughout next year in readiness for the closure of the CDMA network in 2008, when Next G coverage will be as good, or better than currently available with the older CDMA technology.

ADBE: Adobe Adds Sophisticated Blogging Capabilities to Contribute 4

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced immediate availability of Adobe® Contribute™ 4 software, a new version of the award-winning web publishing solution designed for business, education and government workers to easily and safely contribute content to the Web without having to learn HTML. Key features in Adobe Contribute 4 include new blog publishing capabilities, unified web publishing, enhanced Microsoft Office integration for Windows® users, and Adobe Flash® video support.

“We're living in an era where rapid information flow is expected,” said Don Walker, senior director of product marketing at Adobe. “With Adobe Contribute 4 anyone with basic computer skills can easily publish updated information to the Web, offloading Web site administrators from tedious routines and enabling professional Web site designers and developers to spend more time on creative design.”

The new unified web publishing feature of Adobe Contribute 4 enables users to post and publish content to multiple Web sites and blogs, all from a single application. Because of its visually intuitive authoring capabilities content authors and contributors can edit or update Web sites and blogs quickly and easily. Users can also work offline without losing content changes due to a dropped connection or browser 'Back' button.

Because Adobe Contribute 4 works seamlessly with Macromedia® Dreamweaver® from Adobe, site administrators give authoring permission and can maintain Web site integrity, and look-and-feel even when multiple authors update content across the site. Windows users using Adobe Contribute 4 also have a new ability to post and publish content to their Web sites and blogs directly from within Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel® and Outlook®, further eliminating extra steps and reducing editing time.

“Contribute 4 continues to improve upon an already highly functional and easy-to-use content management tool,” said Tim Hickernell, content management expert. “Extending its low complexity interface to support blogging services removes stone age barriers for business users needing to keep up with evolving online content metaphors.”

Adobe Contribute 4 makes it easy for web designers and developers, as well as web administrators to help their users get started with blogs using the same familiar environment they use to update Web site content. Contribute also supports the most popular blog servers -- Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress -- and gives the option of connecting to in-house blog servers, straight out of the box. Rich media support has been enhanced in Adobe Contribute 4 enabling users to drag and drop images, movies, and now Adobe Flash video files into their Web pages or blog entries. In addition, users can publish content from a browser to their Web site and blog. Contribute maintains the original formatting and automatically posts the source for the content as well as a link.

About Contribute
Contribute is a popular web authoring tool among a wide range of organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to academic institutions, as well as government agencies. Today, more than 600,000 copies have been sold to both small and large organizations seeking to quickly and efficiently keep web content fresh and up-to-date.

Pricing and Availability
Contribute 4 is available for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, and is immediately available through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store. Estimated street price is US$149 and registered users of qualifying earlier versions can upgrade for an estimated street price of US$79. For more detailed information about Adobe Contribute 4 visit www.adobe.com/products/contribute

SAP Extends Human Capital Management Market Leadership with Over 10,000 Customers

Continuing its ongoing momentum within the human capital management (HCM) applications market, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today cemented its market leadership position by announcing the accumulation of more than 10,000 HCM customers in 110 countries worldwide. International lifestyle company HUGO BOSS, global mining company Rio Tinto and Orange County (Florida) Public Schools join a number of recent customers that have selected mySAP™ ERP HCM to maximize workforce potential and automate human resources processes, enabling SAP to reach this landmark goal. The announcement was made at the Human Resource (HR) Technology Conference and Exposition, being held in Chicago, Illinois, October 4 – 6.

The 10,000th customer milestone follows a recent Gartner Dataquest report (“Market Share: ERP Software, Worldwide, 2005,” June 12, 2006) that names SAP as the number one software vendor in the HCM market. In addition to this achievement, SAP is recognized as a leader in the Forrester Wave™: “HR Management Systems — Multinational Enterprises, Q3 ’06.” See related press release, titled “SAP Recognized as a Leader in Human Resource Management Systems.”

Forward-looking organizations are actively confronting prevalent trends such as building and retaining an efficient, functional workforce, identifying and developing high-potential employees, and assessing the impact of an aging workforce and potential talent shortages. At the same time, these organizations need to provide high-quality, cost-effective HR services. SAP delivers the applications and technology that enable organizations to implement strategies to meet these needs—such as advanced talent management capabilities, enabling customers to attract, hire and quickly onboard qualified candidates; educate and develop their current workforce; and influence performance through the right mix of compensation, benefits and career development. mySAP ERP HCM further enables customers to construct HR shared services centers for automating and standardizing HR processes through a centralized delivery channel or shared-services organization, providing high-quality services at a lower cost. Built-in workforce analytics reinforce decision-making for executives, HR professionals and line managers through enhanced reporting and analysis, enabling organizations to predict human capital demands and accurately track workforce costs.

“As large and midsize organizations grow their operations and expand their workforces, they strive to tighten organizational control while improving employee performance and engagement,” said James Holincheck, Research VP, Gartner. “In the competitive HCM market, effective solutions must deliver business process improvements, help develop and retain key talent, align the workforce with overall business goals, and be easy to use for employees and managers in order to achieve rapid uptake and results.”

HUGO BOSS Uses Talent Management to Be “Employer of Choice”The lifestyle company HUGO BOSS selected a modern business application to facilitate and optimize the work of managers in HR and other departments. HUGO BOSS went live with SAP E-Recruiting in mid-2005. Using HUGO BOSS’s career portal, applicants can read job advertisements and register in the company’s talent pool. The company now has transparent, standardized processes, expends much less administrative effort and can perform real talent relationship management.

Rio Tinto Mines Employee Talent with mySAP ERP HCM
Rio Tinto, a world leader in finding, mining and processing mineral resources, is implementing mySAP ERP HCM globally, including talent management functionality such as enterprise learning management, recruitment and succession management to identify and develop the human capability required to meet their current and future business needs.

“With mySAP ERP HCM, we can identify and track existing high-potential employees as possible successors for key positions and with the SAP Learning Solution we ensure that our employees have the correct qualifications to help us fulfill the aims of the company,” said Mike Ryan, global process team lead for “Manage People” initiative, Rio Tinto. “By replacing our HR legacy systems with the SAP solution we are able to streamline our recruiting and talent management processes and apply these processes consistently across all of our businesses. We are now in a position to better leverage the talents of our employees, our company’s main asset.”

Orange County Public Schools Support Hiring Cycle with E-Recruiting“Orange County Public Schools hires more than 2,000 employees each year and needed a solution that would change the way we do business, improving how the administration recruits talented teachers and hires qualified staff,” said Charles Thompson, chief information officer, Orange County Public Schools, Florida. “As an existing SAP customer, Orange County turned to the latest version of mySAP ERP because its e-recruiting capabilities will help automate steps in the recruiting process, giving the school district visibility into candidates and allowing hiring managers to post job descriptions.”

“SAP has earned the trust of over 10,000 organizations all over the world that run the mySAP ERP HCM application, confirming SAP’s number-one position and proving our ability to enable superior process innovation and operational flexibility for human capital management,” said Claus Heinrich, member of SAP’s executive board in charge of Human Resources, Processes and Production. “SAP recently upgraded its internal HR system to the latest version of mySAP ERP HCM to achieve the full benefits of the software’s automated processes as well as new functional improvements such as talent management.”

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.

IBM Announces New Mid-Market Software Additions to the Express Seller Initiative

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has announced the inclusion of several mid-market software offerings to its successful Express Seller initiative for IBM Business Partners. Added to the Express Seller initiative are Lotus Domino Collaboration Express, Lotus Domino Messaging Express, Lotus Domino Utility Server Express, IBM Workplace Services Express, IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for Files, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Express.

The expansion of the Express Seller initiative is in line with IBM's goal of continuing to help Business Partners sell to the mid-market. According to leading IT analyst firm IDC, the overall small and medium-sized business (SMB) opportunity is worth US$465 billion, with the mid-market alone worth US$214 billion. IBM is capitalizing on this opportunity through its Express Advantage initiative which includes Express Advantage offerings, PartnerWorld Express Advantage initiatives and resources for Business Partners and enhanced customer experience capabilities designed specifically for mid-market customers. IBM Express Advantage offerings include a complete range of IBM systems and software products, infrastructure solutions, business solutions and a full range of financing options available through IBM Global Financing.

The Express Seller initiative is part of PartnerWorld Express Advantage and helps Business Partners rapidly deliver affordable, cutting-edge technology to help SMB customers address their business challenges. Express Seller pairs IBM's demand generation resources with attractive pricing and conditions, helping to enable sales and reach into the SMB market. Just as the IBM Express Advantage offerings are specifically designed to meet the needs of SMB customers, the Express Seller program is specifically designed to help IBM Business Partners sell these products to SMB customers.

The inclusion of the software solutions in Express Seller was piloted in Europe during the summer and is now available in the Americas. This addition contributed to the momentum that the program saw during that time. In the second quarter 2006, Business Partner sales created through the Express Seller initiative grew by 58%, and more than 100 new partners joined the program during that time.

The addition of these software solutions to the Express Seller program also springboards off of IBM's recent announcement of its "Express Track" initiative. Express Track is a $100 million global drive to reach thousands of local IT resellers, including those who sell competitor products. This drive continues IBM's SMB market expansion throughout 2006, focused on growing mid-market sales of IBM technology solutions through the channel. Express Track includes increased IBM coverage and enablement support for IBM Business Partners. This demand generation support is coupled with the addition of more than 300 people worldwide to provide coverage and enablement for local IT resellers.

IBM aims to continue broadening Express Seller to include more software and services offerings, as well as to increase availability around the globe. At the same time, IBM is also working to promote other key vehicles of channel profitability, including the Software Value Incentive (SVI) -- IBM's new incentive program that incents partners across all stages of the sales cycle. Stage II of SVI launched in July in 48 countries, including such high-growth areas as India, Russia, Czech Republic, Thailand and Vietnam. In the first three weeks of Stage II of SVI, approximately 800 new partners joined the program and registered more than 500 opportunities.

For more information on Express Seller, Express Track or the Software Value Incentive, please visit www.ibm.com/partnerworld/smb

TWX: AOL Launches Free OpenRide Software for All Online Users

AOL today launched a new free version of its software – called AOL OpenRide – for all online users that combines access to email, instant messaging, Web browsing and search, as well as an all-in-one digital entertainment media center into a single interface. Optimized for broadband use, OpenRide works over any high-speed cable or DSL connection and is available at no cost at http://www.aol.com/openride

Through an innovative interface, AOL® OpenRide™ streamlines the online experience and makes it easier to multitask. Consumers can check multiple email accounts – from other providers and from AOL – as well as watch videos, listen to music and view photos and more – through one integrated screen. The screen is organized by a unique four-paned “Quad View” that keeps all features within reach and reduces window clutter.

Based on a new open and modular software technology platform, OpenRide represents the next evolution of AOL’s all-in-one experience for broadband. As the OpenRide software evolves it will enable users to choose other features to bring in for additional customization and personalization.

“Broadband users are simultaneously accessing multiple Internet features and consuming an ever-increasing amount of digital media," said Joel Davidson, Executive Vice President of Products and Technology, AOL. "We saw an opportunity to provide a new kind of software that could streamline their core activities - checking email, instant messaging, Web browsing and search, and enjoying videos, music and photos - in one convenient interface that automatically adapts as they navigate between features. OpenRide is a new addition to AOL's growing suite of free products and services that we're excited to introduce as a new way for people to enjoy the Internet and the benefits of broadband."

Features of the OpenRide software include:

— “Quad View” interface that automatically adjusts itself based on the user’s current activity to give them a better view. For added control and flexibility, the Dynasizer™ navigation tool lets users resize the panes at any time. The panes are designed to work with each other; for example, a user can easily share their digital photos from the Media Center through email or an instant message with one click.


— Access to multiple email accounts, with easy control of folders to store and organize messages. This includes email from any POP3 account, such as Google Gmail™ and Yahoo! Mail Plus, as well as email offered through broadband service providers, in addition to AOL® Mail, AIM® Mail and new AOL® My eAddress personalized “vanity domains.” AOL’s industry-leading spam and anti-virus protections are included with OpenRide to help keep users’ AOL email inboxes free from junk mail and harmful viruses.


— Access to personal Buddy List® feature and Address Book with presence indication. If a contact isn't online, OpenRide can turn an IM into a text message or e-mail, so the message reaches the recipient. Users can also send large files quickly via IM.


— All-in-one digital entertainment Media Center that makes it easy for users to view videos from their computer or from the Web, including highlights from the new AOL® Video portal. From the Media Center, consumers can also listen to hundreds of online radio stations through AOL® Radio with XM® or play songs from their own personal library, view and share their digital photos, as well as access files from their computer - with desktop search functionality provided – from one place.


— Web Browser that includes time-saving features such as tabbed browsing and thumbnail previews, as well as enhanced security, such as phishing protection and spyware protection, to help keep users safer online. The AOL.com® Web portal gives OpenRide users immediate access to top news stories, videos, weather, sports, and more.


OpenRide can be downloaded and installed in minutes and there is no sign-in to use the browser and Media Center, only when users want to access personal communication features.

Consumer input played an invaluable role throughout the research and development process for OpenRide. AOL surveyed thousands of Internet users – including those who’ve used AOL software and those who haven’t – about the OpenRide concept and prototype, and conducted in-home field testing with hundreds of households to test the product prior to its initial release.

Research focused on consumers’ broadband behaviors, including the core Internet activities on which they spend the most time, as well as emerging trends and interests. Among other things, the research identified a need to make it easier for people to multitask more efficiently online without having to jump between multiple windows. Unique features like the Quad View interface and Dynasizer tool were created as a direct result.

In addition to the new OpenRide software, AOL has made many of its popular features and services available for free for anyone with an Internet connection as part of the Company’s strategy to expand the size and engagement of its audience. This includes AOL software and email, new vanity domains via My eAddress, Safety and Security Center, Active Virus Shield full computer virus/spyware protection and Active Security Monitor, AOL® Parental Controls, 5 GB of free storage via Xdrive.com, a free local phone number via AIM® Phoneline, and more. For more information, visit http://www.aol.com/free

This fall, AOL also plans to launch a new version of AOL® Search that is optimized for broadband. Currently in Beta (http://preview.search.aol.com ), the new search service goes beyond just text links and organizes relevant results in a variety of formats on one easy-to-use page, including Web search enhanced by Google®, plus relevant videos, pictures, sound clips, local information and more.

OpenRide is available to download free of charge at http://www.aol.com/openride and there is no obligation or AOL membership required to use it. It is designed for Internet users who have any broadband (high speed cable or DSL) online connection. The OpenRide software works with Microsoft® Windows XP®, and requires a Pentium® II, 300Mhz or better processor, and 256MB+ RAM memory. The software is optimized for a computer screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher.

IBM Acquires Ubiquity's DORANA Product Line

IBM today announced it has acquired the DORANA product line and associated assets of Ubiquity Pty Limited, a privately held company based in Melbourne, Australia. Financial details were not disclosed.


This product line acquisition advances IBM's software asset management offerings, which help customers make informed software investments and decisions based on actual software use activity on both distributed and mainframe platforms. It also helps customers align mainframe software spending with business priorities, which is a key part of Tivoli's service management strategy.

For example, if a brokerage group is ramping up its use of software resources, the company can spot this well ahead of time, plan for it, and determine when they will approach a contract threshold that will require them to pay for more software. Also, by gathering software inventory and use activity information, a company that just merged with another can discover software that is redundant, link it to associated contract details and use that information for future buying decisions.

The technology will enhance IBM's systems management software portfolio and accelerate the delivery of asset management capabilities for System z software by helping organizations manage software costs and license compliance risk to align with changing business needs.

IBM Expands Open Source Contributions to Further Enable Web 2.0 Adoption

AjaxWorld Conference -- In a keynote speech to leading technology executives, David Boloker, IBM's (NYSE: IBM) chief technology officer for emerging Internet technologies, said that the combination of Web 2.0 tools and open source communities are creating a "perfect storm" to enable new kinds of collaborations among businesses and their constituents.

Mr. Boloker also announced that IBM would make new technology contributions to the open source community to speed the adoption and growth of Web 2.0 technologies among enterprises.

Included in IBM's newest contributions to the open source community are additional enhancements to the Eclipse Foundation's Ajax Technology Framework (ATF) and the Mozilla Foundation. IBM plans to generate Ajax as part of the JSF Tools in the next release of IBM Rational Application Developer, which is slated to be available later this year.

These kinds of enhancements to Ajax tools help to make it unnecessary to manually refresh a browser to send or receive information over the Web, thereby reducing the steps needed to complete a transaction online. For non technical users, the enhancements allow users to create a new application in minutes by simply "dragging and dropping" items into a Web browser.

"IBM believes the open technologies that make up Web 2.0 are essential drivers to help transform innovation and competitive advantage for our clients," Boloker said. "Many of these Web 2.0 tools are key ingredients for enabling greater communication between disparate groups, as well as improved efficiency and usability. Added to an IT infrastructure based on a services-oriented architecture, savvy enterprises are leveraging open standards to facilitate Web 2.0 functionality for both the advancement of the industry and for individual businesses."

The new technology contributions to the Eclipse ATF project allows clients to run, deploy, debug and configure Ajax technology on any Web server, including WebSphere, Tomcat, Apache, jBoss and WebLogic. Ease of use and simplified creation assets have been updated to allow developers to add Ajax support to existing projects so applications do not have to reside in Eclipse. Important new features introduced for developers are the ability to type in a Web address within the Eclipse ATF and begin debugging Ajax applications and the ability to change CSS and DOM properties with live rendering in the browser.

The Mozilla foundation has updated its toolkits with contributions from IBM that allowed ATF to debug Ajax applications running with ATF that utilize the foundation's XulRunner Rhino code. These enhancements are available in mozilla.org. Ultimately this creates a more efficient Firefox browser for Ajax development and an easier interface for users to shop, work, plan, correspond and navigate online.

IBM also announced today the opening of a Web development zone on developerWorks, the skills-building hub of IBM's developer community with nearly 5.5 million registered users. The Web development zone features technical resources for Ajax, PHP, ATOM, RSS, and Ruby, as well as Web development frameworks such as Spring, Shale, Struts, Rails, and Tapestry, all aimed at providing developers with a one-stop shop of resources for creating dynamic Web applications. A core area in this zone is the Ajax resource center, which provides a consolidated section for developers to access Ajax articles, tutorials, technical tips, discussion forums and Web feeds, enabling them to quickly and efficiently find the information they need to build their skills and create interactive Web applications using Ajax techniques. For more information, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ajax

HPQ: PepsiCo International (PEP) Taps HP for Global Technology Infrastructure Management

HP today announced it has signed a seven-year global services agreement with PepsiCo, Inc., (NYSE: PEP) to provide data center management services and infrastructure consolidation for the company’s PepsiCo International division.

HP will consolidate PepsiCo International’s technology infrastructure into three HP data centers located in Mexico, Singapore and the United Kingdom. These data centers will support PepsiCo business operations in more than 60 countries outside the United States and Canada.

This initiative will migrate PepsiCo International to a standardized storage and server architecture that provides capability upgrades in the areas of application management, network security, disaster recovery, asset management and operations support. HP will use a variety of storage and server systems, tools and software to manage PepsiCo International’s new data center environment.

In addition, with PepsiCo International choosing BT as its network provider, there will be more opportunities for the HP and BT alliance to help increase service integration and innovation for PepsiCo International.

“We have closely collaborated with PepsiCo International to build an IT environment that will help them become more adaptive,” said John E. Evers Jr., vice president and general manager, Managed Services – Americas, HP. “By standardizing and optimizing its server environment, PepsiCo International can better flex to meet its changing business needs and in turn provide better service to customers anywhere in the world.”

About PepsiCo, Inc.

PepsiCo Inc. is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies with annual revenues of $33 billion. Its principal businesses include Frito-Lay snacks, Pepsi-Cola beverages, Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana juices and Quaker foods. Its portfolio includes 17 brands that generate $1 billion or more each in annual retail sales.

MSFT: EMC and Microsoft Form New Enterprise Content Management Alliance, Extend SharePoint Server With Content, Compliance and Archive Solutions

EMC Corporation and Microsoft Corp. today announced a new enterprise content management (ECM) alliance aimed at helping to enable organizations to become People-Ready with their compliance, regulatory and other critical business data. This alliance enables information workers to take advantage of the Microsoft® tools and applications they use every day to access and contribute to the critical business processes available in their ECM infrastructure. As part of this strategic alliance, EMC will introduce a set of new content and archiving products that enable tighter integration between the industry-leading EMC Documentum ECM platform and Microsoft solutions and platform technologies. This announcement builds on the existing EMC and Microsoft alliance

EMC will bring to market new solutions that seamlessly integrate the EMC Documentum platform with multiple Microsoft solutions and platform technologies including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, SQL Server™ 2005 and enterprise search solutions. Microsoft provides content management capabilities in SharePoint Server 2007 today. With this new alliance SharePoint users can take advantage of the advanced ECM capabilities of the Documentum platform. Information workers will be able to access the Documentum platform natively from within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office system, enabling users to leverage the power of the Documentum platform in areas such as advanced records management, business process management, imaging and rich media from their preferred Microsoft applications.

“In response to demand from our mutual customers, Microsoft and EMC are working together to help enable customers to take advantage of the ECM capabilities across Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the EMC Documentum technologies,” said Kurt DelBene, vice president of the Office Business Platform Group at Microsoft. “By expanding on the rich integration between Documentum and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, we are offering customers more choice and control over the management of their business information.”

“For years, customers have been demanding seamless integration of their working environments with enterprise-level content management capabilities such as content classification, retention, workflow and security,” said Balaji Yelamanchili, senior vice president and general manager of Content Management & Archiving at EMC Corporation. “Today’s announcement makes this integration possible and is yet another milestone in EMC and Microsoft’s collaborative efforts to deliver enterprise-class solutions that address customers’ most critical business information requirements.”

“At Dow Corning, we’re a large EMC Documentum customer with approximately 150 content management applications across our organization and a premier Microsoft customer,” said Ann-Marie Horcher, senior specialist at Dow Corning Corp. “We’re pleased to see EMC working closely with Microsoft to integrate its content management capabilities directly into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. We believe this is the right strategic direction, as the success of content management is ultimately determined by our end users’ ability to access the content and capabilities necessary to meet their business needs using familiar applications.”

These solutions from EMC will allow manual or automatic archival of content from SharePoint repositories to a Documentum repository while keeping content accessible and searchable from within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. By archiving content from SharePoint into Documentum for long-term retention and management, organizations can help their information workers meet compliance, content utilization, and storage optimization policies and procedures, all from within the familiar Microsoft applications they use every day.

“There has never been a better time for customers to realize the value that the Microsoft platform and applications, combined with partner solutions, can provide. We know that great companies like EMC are committed to providing our customers with the highest-quality end-to-end experience,” said Robert Bernard, general manager of the Global ISV Group at Microsoft. “This strategic alliance presents an exciting opportunity for our joint customers to get the most value out of their investments in both EMC’s and Microsoft’s technologies. Together, we are thrilled to be able to provide a world-class user experience built on Microsoft software with EMC.”

EMC has also extended the Documentum platform to support Microsoft SQL Server 2005. With this new integration, EMC Documentum customers can now use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to achieve a better application experience, improved performance and more application reliability. At the same time, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 customers can leverage enterprise-level content management capabilities including process and repository services for increased functionality and flexibility in collaboration, automation and security.

“Enterprises are faced with increasing regulatory complexities — including new changes in the federal rules of evidence — even as their confusion increases about the right tools to manage content,” said Toby Bell, research director at Gartner Inc. “To mitigate risk and simplify decisions about better content provisioning, an ideal combination of basic and higher order content services functionality would marry specific parts of each type of offering to allow for strategic content control. 2007 might be the year when content governance policies and the supporting technology finally become effective in better managing out cost and complexity, while managing in availability and accountability.”

At Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006 in Orlando, Fla., Oct. 8–13, Microsoft and EMC will demonstrate integration of the EMC Documentum platform and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 at booths 602 and PS-2. EMC will deliver a presentation on Oct. 10 from 4:45 to 5:45 p.m. titled, “Extending Microsoft Office and SharePoint with EMC Documentum.” More information about Gartner Symposium/ITxpo can be found at http://www.gartner.com/it/sym/2006_/sym16/sym16_home.jsp

Pricing and Availability
EMC Documentum platform support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is scheduled to be available this quarter. EMC Documentum Content Services for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and EMC Documentum Archive Services for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 is scheduled to be available during the first quarter of 2007. Prices vary by configuration. More information about these and other EMC software products can be found at http://software.emc.com

Business Objects Completes Acquisition of Armstrong Laing Limited

Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, announced it has closed the acquisition of privately-held Armstrong Laing Limited (ALG Software), a leading provider of profitability management and activity based costing solutions.

"The acquisition was an all-cash transaction of approximately £30 million GBP (approximately $56 million USD) for all outstanding shares of ALG Software by Business Objects (U.K.) Limited, a Business Objects wholly owned U.K. subsidiary, and will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. Total revenue for ALG Software was approximately $19 million for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2006."

With the addition of ALG Software, Business Objects expands its enterprise performance management (EPM) software portfolio with solutions for profitability management, activity based costing, predictive planning, and strategic business performance measurement. ALG Software's profitability management and activity based costing solutions represent a fast-growing segment of the EPM market and complement the existing Business Objects EPM solutions. Today, more than 400 customers worldwide use ALG Software's solutions, including American Express, British Airways, British Telecom, Heineken, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, US Department of Labor, and WHSmith.

Business Objects plans to announce further details on the integration of ALG Software in November, from the Business Objects Insight Americas 2006 User Conference in San Francisco.

BORL: Borland Unveils Lifecycle Quality Management Solution, Enabling IT to More Confidently Deliver Higher Quality Software

Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ: BORL, www.borland.com), the global leader for Software Delivery Optimization (SDO), today unveiled the Borland Lifecycle Quality Management (LQM) solution. A new offering designed to enable customers to deliver every application with confidence, Borland's LQM solution ensures quality is built into software at the very point of project definition, tested earlier and more often, and traced throughout every phase of the software delivery lifecycle.

The Borland LQM solution offers the first integrated ALM product suite that links business requirements to code to testing priorities and activities in an automated and traceable way. This connection helps break down barriers between business, development and QA teams so IT organizations can have more confidence that the software they deliver meets business requirements, is on-time, and offers correct code with minimal defects. In addition to ALM technology, the Borland solution includes a proven set of process best practices, assessments and skills training to institutionalize a more proactive and preventative approach to software quality than what many organizations have today.

"The consequences of poor software quality are well known, yet quality is still often treated as an afterthought - something addressed late in the lifecycle with only one organization (QA) truly held accountable," said Erik Frieberg, vice president of product marketing and strategy at Borland Software. "Borland is making it easier for organizations to ensure quality is a shared responsibility across teams and throughout the lifecycle. This is a significant step in our vision for Software Delivery Optimization, and it is what our LQM solution is built to achieve."

A Proactive Solution to Improve Quality
LQM is one of the four holistic solutions that Borland offers to make software delivery a more manageable, efficient and predictable business process. The Borland LQM solution offers a solid foundation of ALM technologies to "quality-enable" all members of the software delivery team, including business analysts, architects, developers, testers and management. It includes the following components:

Gauntlet™: A better way to prevent - not react to - software defects
Gauntlet is a unique new developer test and defect prevention system that builds quality checks into existing development tasks. Gauntlet works with existing software configuration management (SCM) and version control systems to measure and analyze code as it's checked in, isolating problem code before it affects others. In addition to reducing broken builds and costly rework, Gauntlet promotes a continuous build and testing environment so all teams have greater visibility into application health earlier in the lifecycle. Gauntlet is also designed to support third-party plug-ins to test for a broad range of potential defects such as security vulnerabilities, license compliance violations, code complexity and readability.


An enterprise-class platform for software quality management
Borland SilkCentral® Test Manager™ serves as the management foundation for all pre-deployment quality activities. It is a single, powerful and open web-based test management system that supports all stages of the software quality lifecycle from planning, test management, execution and reporting of automated and manual testing activities. SilkCentral Test Manager integrates tightly with Borland SilkTest® for automated functional and regression testing and Borland SilkPerformer® for load and performance testing. It is also designed to interface easily with other open-source or commercial testing tools on the market, such as those from Mercury, to ensure customers can leverage their existing assets and investments while still pursuing a more preventative approach to quality.


Integrated ALM products for requirements-based testing, version control and enterprise defect management.
New integrations between Borland SilkCentral Test Manager and Borland's CaliberRM™ and Caliber DefineIT™ products help organizations automate the alignment of their requirements and testing processes. This enables teams to build quality metrics into requirements from the very beginning, to generate test cases directly from requirements, determine the impact of changes, and align teams to test what matters. Additionally, new integrations across the Silk™ products with Borland StarTeam® provide test asset version control and a proven, enterprise-ready defect and change management system.


Process expertise and training to ensure customer success
Technology alone cannot change the reactive, waterfall approach to quality that exists today. Therefore, the Borland LQM solution packages process consulting and educational services to refine and institutionalize a process that can help companies effectively plan, verify, validate, manage and improve software quality.

An Emerging Approach to an Age-Old Problem
"Many application development organizations overemphasize late-stage testing and tools," said Jim Duggan of Gartner in a research report targeted to CIOs¹. "Since the earliest research into software quality, it has been apparent that a balanced approach that exploits people, processes and tools at several stages throughout the life cycle can achieve improved quality and predictability at the lowest overall cost."

The ability to integrate existing software delivery processes in a more automated and efficient manner can not only help improve quality, but can also increase team productivity, lower development costs, and improve time-to-market. A recent Borland survey of almost 800 IT professionals indicates that companies are already seeking out these integrations². Over 40 percent of those survey respondents said they are in the midst of, or planning to, integrate their requirements and QA processes within the next year.

Borland's LQM solution specifically helps to align and support the following processes:

• Requirements definition and management


• Test management and execution


• Architecture and design analysis
  


• Development test and defect prevention


• Automated functional testing


• Performance and scalability testing


• Defect tracking and version control

"Quality is at the heart of our business," said Logesh Dorairaj, lead infrastructure architect for software quality engineering (SQE) at Varian Medical Systems, a leading manufacturer of medical technology for treating cancer. "Both the industry we're in and the strict compliance regulations we must deal with, such as SOX and HIPPA, require us to aim at delivering zero-defect products with high traceability. The ability to link requirements from inception through testing gives us a high level of confidence that we're delivering a quality product that's built to specifications. To do this in the past, we had to manually connect our engineering and testing processes, and the different systems used by those teams. Having a fully-integrated solution to automate this makes our processes much more efficient."

"Millions of customers rely on EarthLink's software and services daily, and Borland helps us deliver the optimal Internet experience to each and every subscriber," said Barbara Tam, senior quality engineer at EarthLink. "Working with a company like Borland helps ensure that when we upgrade or launch new and innovative products, that we are delivering a best-in-class solution each and every time."
Availability

The Borland LQM solution is available now, with the exception of Gauntlet. An early access release of Gauntlet is currently available for public download and evaluation, and the product will be generally available later this year. To download this early access release, please visit: http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_gauntlet.html.

For more information on Borland's LQM solution, please visit http://www.borland.com/us/solutions/lifecycle_quality_management/index.html.

MS: Morgan Stanley Acquires Nan Tung Bank in China

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) announced today that it has acquired Nan Tung Bank, a Zhuhai-based foreign funded bank formerly owned by Nam Tung (Macao) Investment Limited, a full subsidiary of Bank of China. The acquisition, approved by the China Banking Regulatory Commission, will enable Morgan Stanley to strengthen further its world-class platform in China and offer a broader range of products and services to its clients.

Nan Tung Bank, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Morgan Stanley Bank International, offers a comprehensive set of commercial banking products and services, including deposits, home mortgage loans, corporate loans, foreign currency exchange and remittances, trade finance and credit facilities to individuals as well as corporate customers based primarily in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province.

John Mack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley, said, "We want to build the leading, fully integrated financial services firm in China and the acquisition of Nan Tung Bank is another important milestone in our pursuit of that strategy. We are pleased to be the first among our peers to establish an onshore commercial banking platform in China, and believe it will help further strengthen our leadership position in this increasingly important market."

"Growth markets such as China are critical to the future of Morgan Stanley, and we are committing the resources, people and capital we need to pursue the significant investment opportunities in the country," said Alasdair Morrison, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. "With this new banking entity, we have taken a critical step to increase our presence and franchise in China to better service our domestic and international clients."

Commenting on future plans for the bank, Hans Schuettler, CEO of Morgan Stanley Asia, said, "By leveraging Morgan Stanley's global strength, industry expertise and multi-product capabilities, we look forward to growing Nan Tung Bank's business further and continuing to contribute significantly to the development of China's financial sector."

"We are pleased to have received regulatory approval for this ground-breaking transaction," said Wei Christianson, Morgan Stanley's China CEO. "Nan Tung Bank is a good strategic fit for our China business. This platform will allow us to provide a wider array of new product capabilities that are currently offered only by commercial banks with a presence within China."

As one of the world's largest financial services companies, Morgan Stanley also has significant commercial banking experience, with the Firm already operating commercial banking entities around the world, including in South Korea, Russia and Brazil.

Founded in 1985, Nan Tung Bank was the first foreign-funded bank incorporated and headquartered in China.

INTC: Intel, VMware Expand Virtualization Capabilities to More Server Vendors Around the World

Intel Corporation today announced that it is now providing VMware Inc. certified virtualization solutions for some of the company’s server platform and motherboard products.

For the first time, server vendors from around the world which participate in the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA) program will have an opportunity to adopt and market VMware’s popular products to their IT customers.

ESAA aligns with leading software providers and includes a validation service within Intel’s Enterprise Platform and Services division. The alliance is aimed at combining robust Intel-based server platforms and building blocks with software applications from other companies to provide certified server solution offerings to resellers.

“Authorizing ESAA resellers to sell VMware Infrastructure 3 on some of the most popular and powerful server building blocks in the world is a big revenue opportunity for the channel and a way to expand the benefits of VMware products to more and more companies around the world,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group and general manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group. “This is an exciting addition to the growing number of validated Intel Xeon® server-based software solutions Intel can offer its resellers through our ESAA program.”

“VMware Infrastructure 3 now delivers a full set of capabilities that support a dynamic, pooled data center, resulting in cost savings and simplification for IT organizations large and small,” said Brian Byun, VMware vice president of products and alliances. “VMware is pleased to expand the availability of this software suite globally on the Intel ESAA platform, and we look forward to working with Intel and participating resellers.”

Intel ESAA platforms are now included on VMware’s hardware compatibility list, which expands the range of certified target platform for VMware Infrastructure to companies such as ACER, Bull, Compusys, HCL, Itautec, Gateway, Lenovo, Inspur, Maxdata, MPC, Powerleader, Samsung, Verari and WiPro.

Resellers can find more information at www.intel.com/go/esaa