| TERI and DELL launch "The Climate EduXchange Initiative" in India |
Dell in partnership with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) announced the launch of "The Climate EduXchange Initiative"—an IT-enabled Climate initiative to improve environment education in schools across India. The primary objective of this partnership is to create a motivated force of students, who through technological advancements are aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems.
Elaborating on DELL's vision, Mr. Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, VP and MD Dell International Services, said "Considering the large youth population in India, it is imperative to educate them about issues that govern the future of this planet. This initiative is aimed at empowering the youth with tools and platforms for knowledge sharing that will help them build a better future. The power of youth is certain to bring about a change—and that change needs to start now."
The programme will reach out to six cities-Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mohali and Pune. It will include children from classes 5 to 11 from 50 schools in each city. They will be divided in five clusters and one school from each cluster will be identified as the nodal school (Knowledge Centres). The Climate EduXchange Initiative will harness the power of ICT (Information Communication Technology) providing a platform for students from identified parts of the country to share information and ideas across disciplines, about how climate change is affecting them and how they can do their bit in bringing about change.
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| AMD marks its 40th year as a technology innovator |
AMD recently kicked off activities to recognize 40 years of innovation in the semiconductor industry and its important role as a catalyst for enabling next-generation solutions. May 1, 2009 has marked the official 40-year anniversary of AMD’s founding by Jerry Sanders and seven co-founders in 1969. As part of the year-long anniversary celebration, the company is holding a series of contests in the U.S. and Canada as a gesture of thanks to the dedicated customers who have been, and continue to be, key to AMD’s critical presence in the processor industry.
As a central hub for the contests and information about AMD’s history, the company also launched a site dedicated to the 40th anniversary, with a complete timeline of AMD milestones and full details about the upcoming contests. In coming weeks the site is also expected to feature employee and customer-generated anniversary content.
AMD is launching a series of contests in the coming months to give back to its dedicated fans. In total, the contests will give away 80 prizes, and the lucky winners will take home some of the most innovative AMD products on the market today. The first contest, beginning today, is aimed at the AMD enthusiast community who rely on AMD products for their graphics and processing needs. For this contest, participants who submit brief, creative videos wishing AMD a happy birthday can be entered for a chance to win one of AMD’s award-winning Graphics cards that have received numerous positive reviews from top-notch enthusiast outlets such as Hot Hardware and HardOCP.
AMD will kick off two additional contests later this year, which are planned to give fans the opportunity to win AMD-powered notebook computers as well as popular gaming consoles like the ATI graphics-equipped Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.
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| IBM delivers new social networking and collaboration services |
Addressing the rapid pace of information technology transformation across all industries, IBM announced new social technology enhancements to developerWorks, to help software developers more easily work together on open standards-based innovations. IBM is responding to the growing requirements, with MydeveloperWorks, combining the best in social computing technologies and professional networking into developerWorks, IBM's leading online destination for more than 8 million IT professionals worldwide.
Now developers can more easily gain real-time access to key technology updates, connect with other experts around the globe and build critical skills requirements more quickly to speed development and bring new innovations to market faster—from deploying complex cloud computing applications to architecting a smarter energy grid to building Java applications. Based on Lotus Connections, IBM’s enterprise networking and collaboration technology, developerWorks members can now collaborate in a secure vertical network that connects people around a focused task or goal.
IBM’s developerWorks delivers key skills for developers, students and startups to prepare for emerging opportunities around transforming healthcare, energy and goods transportation, as well as key technology areas such as cloud computing and social tools. For more information, visit: ibm.com/developerWorks
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| Tata Communications and RTComm partner |
Tata Communications announced that the company is partnering with RTComm to provide joint data services between carriers in Russia and the rest of the world. The agreement enables Tata Communications to leverage its position of strength in the worldwide telecommunications sphere, utilizing the localized expertise in the Russian market through RTComm’s established national leadership.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Tata Communications and RTComm will work together to deliver scalable, secure and scalable, secure carrier and enterprise class data solutions, to their respective customers. This partnership enables RTComm, one of the leading companies in the Russian telecommunications market, to deliver global network services to its local customers, while Tata Communications will increase its global footprint with services into this emerging market through RTComm’s local network.
With over 1000 customers throughout Russia, RTComm has the most developed IP network in Russia with 130 access points throughout the country. Tata Communications delivers unmatched global data and network services, which are both scalable and flexible in all international markets. RTComm’s commitment to constantly develop and offer new services in accordance with market trends is the foundation of this strategic agreement with Tata Communications, which offers a global reach and pioneering technology.
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| Hexaware and Greenplum partner |
Hexaware Technologies announced a global partnership with Greenplum, a leading provider of database software for the next generation of data warehousing and large scale analytic processing. While Greenplum will provide the database platform, Hexaware will enable the migration, implementation, upgrades and maintenance services on these platforms.
Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI & A) has been a strong focus area for Hexaware. This association with Greenplum will enable the two companies not only to provide a powerful data warehouse database platform, but also to address the end-to-end implementation of the data warehouse, migration, maintenance and support for customers.
Greenplum will provide Hexaware with the preliminary training and familiarization of the database. Hexaware will continue to build competencies and solution accelerators around the database thus tailoring to specific customer needs. Hexaware is setting up a Greenplum center of expertise and will be creating a team of Greenplum software professionals as part of this initiative.
As a part of this alliance, Hexaware and Greenplum will engage in joint go-to-market activities, which will include customized solutions to enhance the value for the end customer. The companies will embark on joint executive briefings to key customers thus leveraging each other’s competencies.
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| Adaptec to support VMware vSphere |
Adaptec, a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, announced immediate support for VMware vSphere. Adaptec’s Series 5 Unified Serial (SATA/SAS) RAID Controller Family is supported natively via an in-box driver, ready for immediate installation. Launched today, VMware vSphere is the industry’s first cloud operating system, transforming datacenters into dramatically simplified cloud infrastructures to enable the next generation of flexible, reliable IT services. VMware vSphere gives customers uncompromising control, with greater efficiency, while preserving customer choice.
By supporting VMware vSphere, Adaptec can further extend the value of its Series 5 Unified Serial (SATA/SAS) RAID Controller Family into customers’ next-generation datacenters and help enable customers to manage large collections of infrastructure—including CPUs, storage and networking—as a seamless, flexible and dynamic cloud environment.
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| Hitachi Data Systems offers free storage virtualization |
Hitachi Data Systems announced the “Switch it On” program to help customers derive more efficiency out of their environments by improving the optimization of their storage assets. As part of the program, Hitachi Data Systems is offering *free storage virtualization software which enables customers to consolidate all externally attached, third-party storage under common management and optimize with advanced capabilities such as transparent data movement, dynamic provisioning, intelligent tiering and disaster recovery.
“This initiative reaffirms our commitment to help customers save money by enabling them to leverage existing assets they own and reclaim under utilized storage capacity,” said Brian Householder, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and business development, Hitachi Data Systems. “Customers tell us we have the winning strategy because, unlike other storage vendors, our strategy is built upon enabling customers to do more with less and improving on operational and capital expenditures. By leveraging our market leading storage virtualization technology, customers can dynamically thin provision not only internal storage, but external storage as well for nondisruptive data movement, copies, replication, business continuity and migration of thin volumes across externally virtualized storage.”
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| New Citrix NetScaler Web 2.0 Push technology reduces cost |
Citrix Systems unveiled the industry’s first Web 2.0 Push technology as an integrated feature of its popular Citrix NetScaler product line. This groundbreaking new capability was specifically designed to address the demands that today’s interactive Web 2.0 applications are placing on server infrastructures. While Web 2.0 applications are ushering in a new era of enhanced functionality and responsiveness for end users, they are highly inefficient when it comes to server computing resources. In order to create a rich interactive experience, Web 2.0 applications need to maintain a one-to-one user connection to backend servers for extended periods, which severely taxes datacenter resources and adversely impacts performance and scalability. NetScaler is the first application delivery controller to streamline this process by “pushing” data directly to thousands of users concurrently, offloading web servers from this burdensome task. As a result, server costs for delivering Web 2.0 applications can be reduced by five to ten times.
Powering new web applications is an expensive proposition for service providers, often requiring them to purchase racks of new servers to support even moderate numbers of application users. With its new Web 2.0 Push technology, NetScaler can now transmit this data to application users directly from the NetScaler systems deployed in front of the datacenter, relieving the backend server infrastructure from having to manage tens or hundreds of thousands of individual connections.
A distinguishing characteristic of the new NetScaler Web 2.0 Push technology is its ability to enable “publish-and-subscribe” semantics and support the proactive push of data from the server to the client. This approach can be used to deliver continuous streams of new or updated information, creating the illusion of real-time interaction. The result is a highly dynamic user interface that is considerably more responsive than would otherwise be possible.
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| New HP Data Protector software drives down costs |
HP announced enhancements to HP Data Protector software that offers complete protection for virtual environments and flexible data reduction options, at up to 70 percent less than alternatives. This software lowers the cost of protecting data by reducing the amount of data backed-up, using storage capacity optimization options such as virtual full and deduplication.
HP Data Protector delivers new capabilities to support customers’ backup and recovery challenges, allowing them to decrease the risk of information loss with complete protection for VMware Infrastructure environments. HP Data Protector supports eight different methods of VMware Infrastructure protection including integration with the VMware Consolidated Backup framework for scalable, non-disruptive backup of virtual machines. It also helps lower IT costs with the most flexible data reduction options on the market. It reduces business risks associated with data security and compliance besides delivering faster backup and recovery time to value. Organizations are still focused on solving basic backup challenges.
HP recently also introduced two new storage products—HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVA6400/8400) and the enhanced HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) that extend the value of HP Data Protector.
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| Apple updates Xserve with twice the performance |
Apple announced an updated Xserve that delivers up to twice the performance of the previous system. Using Intel “Nehalem” Xeon processors and a next generation system architecture, the 1U rack-optimized Xserve delivers up to an 89 percent improvement in performance per watt. Xserve is available with up to two 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors and industry-leading storage options that include a low-power solid state drive (SSD) and up to 3TB of internal storage. Starting at $2,999, Xserve includes an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.
The new Xserve includes Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 2.93 GHz, each with an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory that delivers up to 2.4 times the memory bandwidth while cutting memory latency up to 40 percent. Using high-efficiency power supplies and intelligent thermal management, Xserve delivers a 19 percent reduction in idle power use.
Xserve’s industry-leading storage capabilities include a 128GB SSD boot-drive option that requires a fraction of the power of a hard disk and delivers up to 48 times faster random access times without occupying a drive bay. Xserve’s three 3.5 inch drive bays support both 7200 rpm SATA and 15,000 rpm SAS drives and can be configured with up to 3TB of internal storage. Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots provide massive I/O bandwidth to support the latest high-bandwidth expansion cards. The Xserve RAID card option now delivers improved performance up to 497MB/s and supports RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 with 512MB of cache without using a valuable PCI Express expansion slot. A 72-hour backup battery is included for enhanced data protection.
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| Citrix expands Citrix C3 Cloud computing platform and program |
Today at Citrix Synergy, the event where virtualization, networking and application delivery meet, Citrix Systems announced a variety of new offerings for its Citrix Cloud Center (Citrix C3) product family to further equip service providers with the infrastructure and product licensing needed to deliver successful clouds services to their customers. Following up to the initial debut of Citrix C3 last Fall, Citrix is now enhancing the C3 platform with the addition of Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop, enabling service providers to deliver Windows applications and desktops as a service. Central to this added functionality is the new Citrix Service Provider (CSP) program which is designed specifically for service providers who provide hosted software services to end users.
In addition, Citrix C3 has been updated to include new scalable, secure, multi-tenant virtual switch and application delivery controller capabilities. To further help customers gain experience with new cloud-based scenarios, Citrix is also unveiling a series of Citrix C3 Cloud Blueprints, which offer guidelines and best practices for testing virtualization, security and application services in a cloud environment. With these enhancements to the Citrix C3 platform and program—including the new Citrix C3 Lab based on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) separately announced today—Citrix is providing an essential set of resources that help make cloud computing a reality for customers of all sizes.
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