Upfront
Global markets
HP
Intermec
iSeries
Leasing
Market forecasts growth
MACs
Resellers
RFID

Upfront- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Dell to attack midsize biz
Dell company chairman Michael Dell, appearing in Texas with that state's Gov. Rick Perry, told a press conference that the computer maker would hire almost 500 engineers for its central Texas facility. And the Round Rock, Texas-based company held a media confab regarding new products aimed toward the small business market—a market that many companies have trouble courting. The company continues to cut prices in order to drive shipments and market share. In addition, the small-to-medium (SMB) market is especially price sensitive, so unlike consumers, it may be receptive to ever-lower Dell prices. A report early this year said SMBs prefer desktops rather than fast-growing portables simply due to the former's lower costs. To be sure, warm and fuzzy job announcements and yet more price cuts won't be enough to keep Dell negativity at bay. The company is facing removal from the NASDAQ because it failed to file its Q-10 form on time. It's also being investigated by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for accounting and financial reporting problems. Combustible batteries also continue to plague Dell, whose laptops were the source of explosions ranging from a business conference in Japan to an office of the web company Yahoo. But the media events seem to have one thing in common: innovation.
Visit www.dell.com.^Back To Top

Global markets: Asia

SMBs across SE Asia set to invest US$490 million on printers
Small and medium businesses (with 1-999 employees) across key countries in Southeast Asia are on track to invest more than US$490 million on printers this year. Southeast Asia includes Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines. Emerging markets in this region, especially Indonesia and Thailand, will account for more than half of the spending, according to the latest study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. Printers that SMBs buy include MFPs (multifunction printers), single-function laser printers, inkjet printers, and dot-matrix printers. MBs in Southeast Asia are opting more for MFPs and document manage-ment systems. Of the total SMB printer spending, approximately 75% comes from small businesses. This is despite the fact that the average SB spending on printers is lower than that of medium or large businesses. SBs tend to purchase lower cost items such as inkjet printers or monochrome laser printers. As managing the costs of consumables is also a key concern for SMBs, it was surprising that more than 66% of the SMBs in Southeast Asia use branded printer cartridges - as opposed to cheaper compatible printer cartridges.
Visit www.ami-partners.com.

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HP

X-Rite partners with HP
HP and X-Rite announced a strategic partnership that aims at seamlessly integrating the worlds of inkjet printing and color management, delivering the first color managed inkjet solution with true plug and play color accuracy and consistency. By incorporating an embedded spectrophotometer based on the X-Rite Eye-One technology and controlled from an intuitive HP Color Center, the new HP Designjet Z Photo Series printers delivers creative professionals breakthrough color accuracy, consistency and superb ease of use, revolutionizing end-to-end color printing solutions. In the case of color management, the two biggest barriers to adoption have continued to be usability and price. Color management has always been something that needed to be purchased and handled separately from the main task of printing. By integrating color management directly into the printer, HP and X-Rite have been able to overcome these barriers.
Visit www.hp.com or www.xrite.com.
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Intermec

Webinar Series offers insight into latest technologies
Register now for one or all of Intermec Inc.'s 2006 Webinar Series webcasts, with information designed to improve efficiency and establish best practices with the latest technologies. The five 60-minute live webcasts cover a range of topics, including retail, forklift technology, RFID in the automotive industry, mobile enterprise and warehouse productivity.

Webcasts include:
Oct 3: Keeping Stores Innovative: Trends in In-Store Mobility
Oct 12: Forklift Technology Convergence: The Future of ADC in the Warehouse
Oct 24: Engine and Component Tracking: Logistics Error Proofing with RFID
Nov 7: The Next-Generation Computer for Mobile Enterprises.
Nov 14: Talk to Your Warehouse: How Speech-Enabled Data Collection Technologies are Increasing Productivity.
Visit www.intermec.com.
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iSeries

Vision launches high availability assessment program
Can your business cope with an outage on your primary iSeries system? Are your business continuity plans up to speed? Are you a candidate for a high availability solution? These are some of the questions that Vision Solutions is helping iSeries shops answer through a new high availability assessment program launched last week. Vision Solutions, which is in the process of being acquired and taken private, partnered with IBM to develop the new "HA Assessment Program," which can take months off the time normally required to evaluate and plan an OS/400 high availability implementation, the companies claim. The HA Assessment Program utilizes Vision's Director software to audit customers' continuity needs and collect relevant information from their iSeries environments. The process takes two days, after which participants will have a better idea of their state of preparedness, the utilization of their current systems, what type of risks their taking with their iSeries technology and infrastructure, and how they can move to Vision's OS/400 high availability product, called ORION.
Visit www.visionsolutions.com/External/HA_Assessment.
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Leasing

IBM Global Financing, Symbol Technologies partner on customer financing program
IBM Global Financing and Symbol Technologies, a provider of "enterprise mobility" solutions, announced completion of a five-year strategic financing services agreement, designed to enable Symbol customers to benefit from more options to finance their enterprise mobility products, software and services. As Symbol's financing partner, IBM Global Financing will provide Symbol's worldwide corporate and small-business customers with a variety of payment plans to acquire Symbol's hardware, software and services. "We are excited to extend our relationship with IBM, leveraging their position as the world's leading IT financing company to add value to Symbol customers and partners who desire financing solutions for Symbol-based solutions," said Sandy Preizler, Symbol's vice president of worldwide channels. "Our market-leading enterprise mobility solutions - paired with the IBM's unique financing capabilities - enhance our business potential, further building on the Symbol-IBM Global Strategic Alliance."
Visit www.ibm.com/financing or www.symbol.com.
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Market forecasts growth

Indicators strong for small businesses
Business.com, the web's leading business search engine and directory, released its August Business.com Barometer, a monthly measurement that provides a snapshot of the rising and falling business search trends among small business Internet users. This month's Barometer reveals that business startup activity is on the rise and existing small businesses are increasing their efforts to secure financing for their business. Topping the Business.com Barometer for August are queries related to Starting a Small Business. Another start-up related query, Franchise Opportunities, is also on the rise, as the #5 gainer month-over-month.

Top 10 Categories – August 2006

Top Gainers - August vs. July 2006
Category Name & % Change from Prev Month
Small Business Loans - 74%
Commercial Real Estate - 66%
Businesses for Sale - 61%
Business Toll Free Number - 44%
Franchise Opportunities - 43%
IT Services - 42%
Banking - 31%
Business Cards - 29%
Container Sales and Leasing - 26%
Local and Long-Distance Carriers - 21%
Visit www.business.com. ^Back To Top

Moves, adds & changes

Sysix Solutions, Inc. expands into German and European markets
Sysix Solutions, Inc., a global technology solutions provider, announced that the company is expanding its international operations with the opening of its new office and European head-quarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In addition the company is in the final stages of acquiring a German company (GmbH) which will become Sysix Solution GmbH the German Subsidiary of Sysix Solutions, Inc. The company is also in the process of hiring an experienced team of German technology professionals to support the new German subsidiary. Sysix Solutions GmbH will deliver a comprehensive suite of technology hardware, consulting and financing solutions to a growing base of customers in Germany, as well as customers across Europe and Asia. In Germany, Sysix Solutions GmbH will work closely with IBM and DNS, a division of Arrow Electronics, to deliver solutions to the European market.
Visit www.sysix.com.

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Resellers

Tech Data U.S. helps IT resellers put focus on customers
Tech Data Corporation recently established its Client Computing business unit to enable systems resellers and manufacturers to more effectively identify, market and develop solutions for a broad range of end-user environments. Aligning an array of sales, marketing and product management resources, Client Computing will help resellers and Tech Data's vendor business partners capitalize on the demand for systems and mobile computing solutions among small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs). Client Computing supports Tech Data's entire systems offering including desktops, notebooks, tablet PCs and mobile devices like PDAs. The unit also will engage Tech Data's specialized business units (SBUs) and product divisions. This enables Client Computing to provide systems resellers with access to the distributor's broad accessories, peripherals, software and services offerings to help them quickly develop custom solutions tailored to individual end-user requirements. In addition, Tech Data recently established a distribution agreement with Parallels Inc., a virtualization software developer with solutions resellers can leverage to enable Intel-based Macs to run Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems simultaneously.
Visit www.techdata.com.
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RFID

California mulls RFID privacy law
California is on the brink of introducing privacy laws to safeguard personal data stored on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in government-issued documents and identification cards. The Identity Information Protection Act of 2006 was passed by state legislators last month and only needs the approval of California Gobernator Arnold Schwarzenegger to become law. The measures are designed to safeguard against either criminal or government abuse of RFID tags by mandating the use of privacy-protecting technologies, such as encryption. The bill, authored by State Senator Joe Simitian (Democrat), would also give Californians the right to decide who can access their personal information stored on RFID cards in documents such as driver's licences, library cards and the like. Privacy activists hope the proposed law will become a template for federal legislation. The proposed California bill has drawn national attention following the federal government's decision to embed RFID tags in new US passports.
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