Meet the new members
ASCDI Inside
Conferences
In other news
Intermec
Markets
Moves, adds & changes
Selling Services Profitably
UK news

Meet the new members

Siemens Financial Services GmbH
With some 1,700 employees and an international network of financial companies coordinated by Siemens Financial Services GmbH, Munich, the Siemens Financial Services (SFS) Group offers a broad range of financial solutions. This covers activities from sales and investment financing to treasury services, fund management and insurance brokerage. SFS' key customers are above all internationally active industrial and services companies, as well as public-sector operators. SFS supervises 21 leasing companies plus a range of partner companies worldwide. The Siemens Group SFS was founded in 1997.
Visit www.siemens.com/sfs.^Back To Top

Computer Transportation Services
Computer Transportation Services (CTS) is a licensed and bonded transportation broker and air freight forwarder specializing in shipments of electronic equipment. Since 1979 CTS has provided customers with blanket-wrap trucking, domestic and international air freight and packaging and crating services nationwide. CTS specializes in reverse distribution and logistics programs for VARs and Resellers of telecom gear. For more details, visit www.moveit.com or www.ballparkrates.com .
Please contact Todd Partridge at 800-831-0030 with any questions.

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ASCDI Inside

PCA acquired by Clarey Technology Partners
Phoenix Computer Associates, Inc. (PCA) is pleased to announce that the company has been acquired by Clarey Technology Partners, LLC, a California-based company skilled and practiced in providing capital, strategies and alliances for emerging growth companies. Additionally, the company has entered into an Accounts Receivable Management program with LSQ Funding Group LC. This program will provide the necessary working capital to continue to build the organization and to expand their quality product and services offerings. As a part of this move, there will be a change to a centralized billing and accounts receivable system so all future payments are directed to PCA through LSQ, which will be noted on the invoice. All of PCA's outstanding operating management and professional sales and product teams will continue to serve you.
Visit www.phoenixcomputer.com.
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Conferences

GridWorld keynotes to highlight commercial benefits of grid computing
IDG World Expo, the leading producer of world-class tradeshows, conferences and events for technology markets, announced the full keynote lineup for GridWorld, scheduled to take place September 11-14, 2006 at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. During their addresses, senior executives from Globus Alliance, eBay, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, HP and more will discuss the commercial benefits of integrating grid computing technologies, products and solutions into core IT operations. GridWorld also brings together the international grid community for in-depth working sessions on user requirements, best practices and interoperable software standards.
Visit www.gridworld.com. ^Back To Top

In other news

No. 1 Korean game, Internet company targeting U.S. market
NHN, the largest Korean Internet company and the No. 1 gamer site in Asia, has announced plans to launch a premier Internet game destination this fall for the American market. An Asian powerhouse, NHN has a market cap of more than $5 billion (U.S.). NHN's search portal and game destinations consistently rank No. 1 in Korea, with NHN's search engine commanding nearly 70 percent market share -- surpassing both Yahoo! and Google Inc. in that market. NHN also operates the No. 1 game destinations in the massive Japan and China markets, with more than 170 million subscribers in China alone. Emphasizing the seriousness of the company's intent to be a global player on the Internet, both original NHN founders, NHN Corp. Global CEO Beom-Su Kim and NHN USA CEO Tae-Sik Moon, have relocated to the United States to prepare for NHN's entry into the American game market.
Visit www.nhnusainc.com. ^Back To Top

Intermec

Symbol Technologies and Intermec resolve all outstanding intellectual property disputes
Intermec Inc. and Symbol Technologies Inc., pioneers and leaders in automated identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies, have reached an agreement that settles all outstanding intellectual property (IP) disputes between the two companies. Under the settlement agreement, Intermec and Symbol have cross-licensed certain patents, have entered into four-year covenants not to sue with respect to remaining patents, and have released patent infringement damage claims that may have existed on the settlement date or may arise before the covenants expire. The specific terms of the settlement agreement are confidential. Both companies believe that the agreement is a good resolution of their IP disputes. They also believe that this agreement is in the best interests of their customers and shareholders.
Visit www.intermec.com or www.symbol.com. ^Back To Top

Markets

Solid State drives to challenge hard drives in laptop market
In the near future, hard disk drives (HDD) may face legitimate competition in the mobile computer mass storage market as Flash-based solid state drives (SSD) stand ready in the wings, reports In-Stat. In fact, SSDs have the potential to dethrone HDD as the top laptop storage choice within 10 years, the high-tech market research firm says. The research leads In-Stat to believe that the SSD market share in mobile computers could reach 50% by 2013. The research was driven by In-Stat's survey of 389 mobile computer users, which allowed primary insight into consumers' valuation of SSD in mobile computers. From this research, In-Stat weighed the perceived benefits of SSDs with the rapidly declining cost/gigabyte trends of Flash to develop a demand sensitive forecasting model.
Visit www.instat.com.
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Moves, adds & changes

Web developer Affinigent acquires iSeries specialist Hainey Business Systems
If you are from the Philadelphia metro area, you might have heard of a company called Affinigent, which is based in York, Pennsylvania. And if you are a midrange customer from that same area, you might have heard of Hainey Business Systems, a company that provides a wide range of services--including sales, systems integration, and Web integration for the OS/400 and i5/OS platform. Affinigent has recently acquired HBS from Shipley Group, which, among other things, runs a giant oil and gas distribution business (for home heating). The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Shipley apparently still has a stake in HBS under the deal it struck with Affinigent.
Visit www.affinigent.com or www.hbs-inc.com.^Back To Top

Seafood company dumps HP3000 for iSeries
Seeking growth in 2004 and dealing with legacy systems from HP, Trident shopped around for servers that could deal with in-house applications and allow integration with other companies during mergers or acquisitions. Also, in a time when careful eaters want to know exactly where their fish came from, and how it was caught or farmed, the company needed a more sure-fire way to perform inventory of the king crab, salmon and other fish their 30-plus vessels haul in almost year-round. Dan Palumbo, chief technology officer, said that with the HP3000, a lot of the company had home-written applications that weren't tightly integrated. Trident was looking for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package to manage its inventory, allowing an easier way to track where and when the fish and seafood had been and was going. After sorting through the major options, such as Oracle and SAP, Trident decided to go with JD Edwards software on an iSeries platform. ^Back To Top

Selling Services Profitably

Welcome fellow members of ASCDI to the second of a series of articles on Selling Services Profitably , compliments of DecisionOne. DecisionOne provides national technology support services for mainframes to desktops, including Sun, IBM, HP Dell and many others. Call Jim Lubeskie for a quote (717-632-6780).

Winning against wounded competitors
If you are in the business of selling hardware, you are faced every day with competition that is selling equipment at close to cost. If the product is sold for less than cost, you suspect that an error has taken place. Would any rational company sell a product for less than the cost? Would you sell a service under its cost?

Read full article here.
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UK news

Lords Committee to debate Internet security
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee is to investigate personal Internet security. They are calling on members of the public with direct experience to get in touch. The Committee claims this is the first in-depth Parliamentary study of the issue. The Committee will investigate:

• The nature and scale of the security threat to private individuals
• How well the public understands the problem
• What can be done to improve personal Internet security and how much does this depend on hardware and software companies
• Whether the regulatory framework for Internet services is up to the job
• How well the government is equipped to counter cyber crime and whether it needs more laws to do so.

The Committee is collecting written evidence until 23 October 2006. It will then meet to hear evidence from experts, before preparing a report for government.^Back To Top