ASCDI in the news
Changing landscape?
IBM
Intermec
iSeries news
Leasing
MACs
Open news
Software
Tools

ASCDI in the news

Key Equipment Finance names Kaileen Almond vice president, Global Brokerage
Key Equipment Finance, one of the nation's largest bank-held equipment financing companies, has announced that Kaileen Almond has been named vice president, Global Brokerage. In this role, Kay is responsible for managing Key Equipment Finance's brokerage operations across all portfolios on a worldwide basis. Her office is located at Key Equipment Finance's worldwide headquarters outside Boulder, Colorado. Kay joined Key Equipment Finance (then Leasetec Corporation, which was acquired by Key Equipment Finance in 1997) in 1987 to develop an in-house brokerage department for global vendor services. She was named global director of Brokerage Operations in 2001. In 2004 the Brokerage department became a corporate-wide function responsible for off-lease disposition of inventory. Prior to joining Key, Kay was manager of Brokerage Operations for StorageTek.
Visit www.KEFonline.com. ^Back To Top

Changing landscape?

HP: Riding Hurd!
Hewlett-Packard has continued to over-achieve, beating Wall Street earnings expectations by $0.05 a share, easily beating Thomson Financial's consensus forecast. HP's revenue was $21.9 billion, compared to $20.8 billion for the same quarter a year ago. The strong results for HP are in sharp contrast to expectations for PC rival Dell. HP—once struggling under the flashy countenance of former CEO Carly Fiorina—continues to impress observers with CEO Mark Hurd's straightforward cost cuts, a vigorous focus on consumer items like mobile PCs, and an increasing aggressiveness with acquisitions. HP's personal systems revenue, which includes commercial and consumer notebooks and desktops, grew 8 percent to $6.9 billion—second in growth only to its software revenue growth of 30 percent—indicating the company may be grabbing shares from the ailing Dell. Notebook sales increased 14 percent and desktops, 5 percent. The companies' exchange in status could be attributed to one word: change. HP has embraced it—starting with the chief executive—while Dell has stuck to methods that worked in the past.
Visit www.hp.com.

^Back To Top

IBM

IBM updates Host Access Client Package for iSeries
IBM unveiled version 6 releases of Host Access Client Package (HACP) for Multiplatform and for iSeries, two bundles that each include new releases of two emulators: Personal Communications for Microsoft Windows and WebSphere Host On-Demand. The new releases bring several enhancements, including support for Kerberos sign-on, the capability to run on Windows x64 editions, compatibility with IBM's Workplace technology, and various new screen, keypad, and mouse functions. IBM intends its Host Access Client Packages to be used by organizations that require flexibility in their host access solutions. For the traditional "power user," the package offers Personal Communications, a Windows-based fat-client emulator for accessing iSeries, zSeries, and DEC or Unix hosts via SNA or IP networks. For the occasional user accessing the same types of host applications from outside the firewall, IBM offers WebSphere Host On-Demand, which supports the same hosts as Personal Communications, but does it through a Java-enabled Web browser.
Visit www-306.ibm.com/software/network/hostaccess.
^Back To Top

Intermec

Intermec's SmartSystems integrated into Radley Data Collection software
Intermec Inc. announced that Radley Corp., an automated data collection software provider, has integrated its X/DC data collection platform capabilities into Intermec SmartSystems Foundation. The addition allows X/DC users to discover, configure, backup, monitor and control Intermec data collection devices from anywhere on the network. Based in Southfield, Mich., Radley is a software development firm focused exclusively on providing cost-effective automated data collection, e-commerce, automotive demand management and supplier collaboration solutions. Intermec SmartSystems is a collection of software products and integration tools that make it easier to configure, deploy and monitor ADC systems. SmartSystems Foundation is a PC-based software package that provides the functionality necessary to configure and deploy systems. SmartSystems Extensions is a collection of interfaces that allows Radley's X/DC to integrate directly into Intermec's SmartSystems Foundation Console.
Visit www.intermec.com or www.radley.com.
^Back To Top

iSeries news

Pat Townsend, New Gen partner to secure iSeries queries
iSeries encryption experts Patrick Townsend & Associates have teamed up with New Generation Software, experts in iSeries reporting and business intelligence, to deliver safe and secure iSeries reporting, the companies announced. The combination of New Gen's NGS-IQ business intelligence software and Pat Townsend's OS/400-based implementation of the Advanced Encryption Solution (AES), called AES/400, should give customers the confidence to handle sensitive data without fear of compromising the integrity of that data or violating one of the many new regulations regarding the handling of data.
Visit www.patownsend.com or www.ngsi.com. ^Back To Top

Leasing

Leasing Partners Capital, Teleco announce formation of Telecom Capital Alliance
Leasing Partners Capital announced a strategic partnership with South Carolina-based Teleco Inc., an international provider of voice, data and video products and services. Under the terms of the agreement Leasing Partners Capital has formed an exclusive division that will operate under the name Telecom Capital Alliance that will become the exclusive leasing arm of Teleco, Inc. Telecom Capital Alliance will be able to offer attractive lease financing options through Teleco's sales channel dealer network to businesses and government agencies interested in purchasing Teleco's products. The venture will be spearheaded by Leasing Partners' Bruce Larsen.
Visit www.leasingpartnerscapital.net or www.teleco.com.

Survey: Leading U.S. small businesses committed to leasing
A new survey from the Equipment Leasing Association finds that an overwhelming majority of SBA award-winning small businesses rely on leasing their equipment. The ELA's seventh annual survey of the Small Business Administration's (SBA) State Small Business Person of the Year asked winners about their equipment financing methods and reasons for leasing equipment. Of the 18 respondents from among 50 U.S. state winners, 95% have leased equipment for the operation of their businesses. Eighty-four percent agree that leasing equipment is a good business strategy for meeting the demands of small businesses. The top benefit of leasing cited by respondents this year was the increased cash flow enabled by leasing. Office equipment is the top equipment type leased, as it has been for the last five years, followed by computers and industrial/manufacturing equipment, both reported by 33% of respondents. Sixty-one percent of the respondents stated that economic and financial market conditions affect their financing option decisions for equipment acquisition, in contrast to 65% of last year's respondents who said that external conditions did not affect their financing decisions.
Visit www.elaonline.com/research/trends.cfm#SBA. ^Back To Top

Moves, adds & changes

iSeries SAN connectivity vendors to merge
Brocade last week announced plans to buy storage vendor McDATA in an all-stock transaction valued at $713 million. In 2001, Brocade became the first maker of storage area network (SAN) infrastructure to gain Rochester's seal of approval for System i support. Its SilkWorm fabric switches connect the System i to other servers and to tape and disk storage devices on a SAN. McDATA followed suit in 2003, announcing support for the platform with its Switch Fabric switches and directors. Both companies' products have been sold by IBM. McDATA will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Brocade.
Visit www.brocade.com or www.mcdata.com.
^Back To Top

Open news

IBM says Sun's open source strategy lacks support
IBM has broken the community camaraderie of LinuxWorld by criticizing systems rival Sun Microsystems' open source strategy on Solaris and SPARC as artificial and lacking genuine support. And, after years of backing Sun's Java as a key ingredient of cross-platform computing, IBM appears to be pitching Eclipse for developers to write their applications once and have them run on multiple platforms while downplaying Java. IBM attacked Sun while outlining its current policy on open source, which it said goes beyond Linux and focuses on applications and community. It's a move one IBM executive promised would “really change the industry.” As far as bold claims go, IBM is up against some pretty stiff competition these days. After years of inactivity, Sun is now setting the pace having open sourced five million lines of Solaris code under OpenSolaris and releasing the design for its ultra-fast UltraSPARC-T1 chip (OpenSPARC). Sun claims two million downloads for SPARC and 2.5m for x86 and x84. Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun software, claims that OpenSolaris is a run-away success. Sun furthermore re-stated its commitment to open source Java - something IBM was particularly vocal in calling for two years ago.
Visit www.ibm.com or www.sun.com.

^Back To Top

Software

Leading logistics firms choose TMW Systems
TMW Systems Inc., the largest provider of enterprise management software for the trucking industry, has recently added several logistics firms--including six third-party logistics providers (3PL)-- to its growing portfolio of 570 customers. TMW reports that at least 75 percent of its customers are engaged in some level of logistics or brokerage operations and that many of these organizations depend upon logistics operations for a significant portion of their revenues.
For years, both asset and non-asset based brokerage operations seeking to improve efficiencies have turned to TMW for software solutions to help them grow and successfully compete in the marketplace.
Visit www.tmwsystems.com. ^Back To Top

Tools

NetSol Technologies awarded elite software process rating
NetSol Technologies and McCue Systems announced it received the prestigious Capability Maturity Model (CMMI) L5 rating by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI). CMMI L5 status, the most rigorous and highest rating available, recognizes global software developers focusing on best practices in product development. Only 94 of the world's software organizations are currently rated CMMI L5. The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMMI) is a model for judging the maturity of the software processes of an organization and for identifying the key practices that are required to increase the maturity of these processes. The CMMI has been developed by the software community with stewardship by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University and has become a de facto standard for assessing and improving software processes.
Visit www.netsoltek.com. ^Back To Top