Citrix Systems announced the appointment of Gemini Communication Ltd as their Silver level Citrix® Solution Advisor (CSA) for all their products. Gemini joins the highly successful family of over 3000+ CSA partners in the world. Being a Silver CSA means that Gemini will have Citrix Certified Sales professionals and Citrix Certified Administrators in their organization to help customers become successful.

Commenting on this appointment Mr. Krishnakumar.A, Head – Sales & Marketing said “Citrix provides the only end-to-end virtualization solution in the industry today, as well as competitive tactical products for desktop, server and application virtualization and network optimization. By partnering with Citrix we know that we represent an expansive portfolio of high-performance application delivery products; and are able to present holistic solutions to the performance, cost and security issues customers face when delivering applications.”

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The Board of Directors of CA, Inc. announced the unanimous election of William E. McCracken, as CA's chief executive officer. McCracken previously served as executive chairman since John A. Swainson's retirement was announced in September 2009. McCracken now holds both the CEO and chairman of the board positions at the Company.

"Over the past five months, Bill has helped direct the day-to-day management of CA and has been integral in developing and executing the strategy to position the Company for market leadership," said Gary J. Fernandes, lead independent director at CA, who headed the Board search committee. McCracken, 67, joined CA's Board of Directors in 2005 and became non-executive chairman in 2007. Prior to joining CA, McCracken held numerous executive positions at IBM during his 36-year tenure, most recently as a member of the Chairman's Worldwide Management Council and general manager of IBM's printing division. He previously served as president of IBM's EMEA and Asia PC Company and as general manager of marketing, sales and distribution for IBM PC Company.

McCracken has been the president of Executive Consulting Group, LLC, and was a director of IKON Office Solutions. He is also a participant in the Chairmen's Forum of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management. In 2009, McCracken was named by the NACD Directorship as one of the top 100 most influential people in the boardroom.

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Symantec has announced the appointment of Vineet Sood as head of channel and alliances in India. In his new role, Sood will be responsible for building and managing strategic business relationships with the partner community in India to accelerate Symantec’s market momentum. 

Sood has been with Symantec for six years and is proficient at aligning sales knowledge with relevant technologies. His in-depth understanding of the partner community has helped  Symantec extend its network of partners.  Sood  brings with him 15 years of extensive direct sales and channel business development experience.  Prior to joining Symantec, Sood was regional sales manager at Ramco Systems and held positions at Tata Tele Services and Wipro. He holds a bachelors degree in engineering and a masters in management from Symbiosis International University.

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Emerson announced the combination of its Aperture and Avocent businesses into a new division that will be led by Stephen C. Hassell, who has served as vice president and chief information officer for Emerson for the past five years.  The new division is part of Emerson Network Power and is headquartered in Huntsville, Ala.  The unit combines Avocent’s management systems division -- which offers access and control of the physical aspects of network devices and servers -- with Aperture’s powerful infrastructure software for a robust portfolio of data center infrastructure management solutions. Emerson acquired Avocent in December 2009 and Aperture in February 2008.

Together with Emerson Network Power’s power systems and energy management and precision cooling, the new division creates a unique infrastructure management solution -- from the rack to the room -- for data center managers to address their most pressing challenge – energy efficiency. 

He has first-hand experience in data center design and management as his team is in the midst of a global consolidation of Emerson’s more than 100 data centers worldwide and recently opened the company’s flagship data center in St. Louis – a $50 million investment that Emerson anticipates will receive LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Hassell came to Emerson in 2004 from Invensys, where he had served as chief information officer.  Prior to Invensys, Hassell worked in Northrop Grumman’s Newport News division.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the United States Naval Academy and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy.  He holds a master’s in management from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. His replacement as CIO has not been named.

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The Konkan Railway is leveraging IBM software to extract fresh insight to improve its train management system, ensure commuter safety and reduce costs by 20%.

With more than 4,500 employees and 14,000 passengers traveling daily on the route, Konkan Railway manages a large network of passenger and freight trains. The primary goal of the railway system is to improve service for its passengers, replace redundant manual procedures with efficient technology solutions to ultimately bring greater operating efficiency.

IBM Informix Dynamic Server has developed 'Railway Application Package' (RAP) system which helps to manage, analyse and maintain train running information, schedules and reduce the passenger delays. Real-time data is fed into the management system that uses smart analytics to respond to information in real time - whether it is scheduling delays, abnormalities or passenger queries.

The solution requires minimal staff management and takes care of all aspects of Konkan's business, from real-time management of train-running, collecting ticket revenue, managing finances and human resources, to automatically controlling station platforms lighting with train-movements. IBM software provides Konkan Railway with cost-effective performance, availability, requiring only two database administrators managing 66 database server instances.

IBM software also helps in managing the platform lights for all passenger-carrying trains at each station and ventilation in few long tunnels. These long tunnels are each greater than 2 km long. Konkan Railway developed information-flow systems and analytics to manage timely air-circulation and platform lights, in an effort to be energy-efficient. Not only does this help... the railway operate more efficiently, but has also resulted in significant energy savings. The same system also offers a web-based train location system, train-operations and ticketing management operations.

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IBM announced that more than 200 customers moved critical business workloads to IBM systems and storage from Sun and HP systems in the fourth quarter of 2009. IBM also unveiled new software that helps customers accelerate and automate their migration projects.

Since IBM established its Migration Factory program four years ago to help clients move to IBM systems, nearly 2,200 companies have switched to IBM systems and storage from Sun and HP. In 2009, more than 800 customers migrated to IBM Power Systems, System x and System z servers and storage solutions, including nearly 550 from Sun and nearly 250 from HP. 

Based on hundreds of migrations from competitive systems to IBM, IBM developers have created new software tools that automate many of the manual processes to help accelerate Sun migrations. This software automatically discovers and identifies the Sun assets, provisions the new target IBM environment, and streamlines workload transitions­--optimized across hardware, software and processes. 

The software can speed migrations from Sun Solaris to Linux or AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system, as well as applications and middleware to IBM systems. This workload-centric methodology has shortened the provisioning step from weeks to days for some clients. 

Customers are turning to IBM for risk-mitigation in moving off Sun and HP platforms and for IBM's long-term investments in integrated systems -- industry-leading hardware, systems software and middleware -- and stable, innovative product roadmaps, producing systems that are designed for emerging workloads such as business analytics. 

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Imation announced it has signed an agreement with MXI Security to develop and manufacture a line of highly secure data storage devices. Under the agreement, the companies will incorporate MXI Security's advanced technologies for user authentication, digital identity and data encryption, including MXI's patent-pending Bluefly Processor technology, into a line of new Imation-branded storage devices. Imation expects to launch the first of these new highly secure devices, including USB flash drives and external hard disk drives, through its global distribution channels by the end of first quarter, 2010.

"We are pleased to announce this important agreement with MXI Security," said Keith Schwartz, director of strategic growth for Imation's global commercial business. "For more than fifty years, we've provided critical data storage support to both government and commercial users, who are facing increasingly stringent security and regulatory requirements. By working with MXI, well known in the industry for its robust security technology and high-quality manufacturing, we can offer a new level of security products to our customers. Our new line of secure data storage products will be FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) validated and manufactured in the U.S., both key requirements for our U.S. government users. Our products will also be CSEC (Communications Security Establishment of Canada) certified for our Canadian customers."

Imation expects to launch the first products in its new line of secure, FIPS-certified USB flash drives and external hard drives powered by the Bluefly Processor(TM) in March 2010. More information on product specifications, pricing and availability will be provided at that time.

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