Op-Ed
Acquisitions
HP
IBM
MACs
Software
Solutions
Training

Op-Ed

SNA: A lingering death

…I got my first microcomputer in 1982, an Atari 800 with a real keyboard, a cassette tape backup (no hard drives yet), and a Basic coder. It attached to a black and white TV. After I got simple stuff going, I wrote a really stupid and clumsy address list report. Problem was that without a printer, it did little good except suck down a lot of evening and weekend time. I bought a used 150lb Centronics 101 printer with its new Centronics parallel port in addition to serial. Just getting it out of the car and up the stairs was an exercise unto itself. Using the printer and the computer, I was successfully able to actually "do" something. My mother’s high school class reunion was my first customer (for their mailing list). It helped that my mom and her friend were the reunion chairwomen. Anyway, that's where this began. That was when I could actually make my computer do stuff, and printing was my interest. I explored the sending and receiving of data and manipulated the sequences of Hex code I sent to the printer. I monitored the serial port for its Hex responses. I gained a deep understanding that it takes to establish communications between CPU and printer.

Fast forward to today. The technology has heaped layer upon layer of function onto simple 8-bit byte code which runs printers at their most fundamental level. It is the understanding of the fundamentals which is commonly not taught, and the programmers, engineers and designers, giving short shrift to "boring" old impact printers, seem to assume higher level language and interfaces in their interoperations.

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Acquisitions

Avnet, Inc. completes acquisition of Magirus Enterprise Infrastructure Division
Avnet, Inc. announced that it has completed its acquisition of the Enterprise Infrastructure Division of Magirus Group. The acquired business, which has annual revenues of approximately $500 million, is a value-added distributor of IBM and Hewlett-Packard enterprise computing products in seven European countries and Dubai. The acquisition is expected to meet or exceed the company’s stated return-on-capital-employed goal and add approximately $0.08 EPS in calendar 2008. The integration of the acquired business into Avnet’s Technology Solutions group in Europe is expected to be essentially complete by June 2008. Avnet Technology Solutions has now significantly increased its presence in the two largest European markets, Germany and UK, while expanding its operations in six additional countries. The addition of 140 skilled employees and 1,300 value-added-reseller customers presents additional opportunities for cross selling and materially expands Technology Solutions' role in the European IT distribution channel.
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HP

HP and Sage offer resellers a roadmap for CRM customers
Hewlett-Packard and Sage Software have developed reference configurations of HP's hardware and storage systems and Sage's SalesLogix CRM application the vendors say will speed up sales and implementation cycles for their channel partners. The two companies are targeting the reference configurations, which are part of the HP Business Intelligence portfolio, toward small and mid-size businesses. They will be of particular value to businesses that are undertaking proof-of-concept CRM projects, the companies say. The configurations are built around Sage's SalesLogix v7.2 CRM software for SMBs. The reference configurations include the HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers; HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Arrays, HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays and direct-attached storage; and HP Systems Insight Manager, HP ProLiant Essentials, and HP Business Technology Optimization management software.
Visit www.hp.com or www.sagesoftware.com.
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IBM

Google and IBM announce university initiative to address Internet-scale computing challenges
Google and IBM announced an initiative to promote new software development methods which will help students and researchers address the challenges of Internet-scale applications in the future. The goal of this initiative is to improve computer science students’ knowledge of highly parallel computing practices to better address the emerging paradigm of large-scale distributed computing. IBM and Google are teaming up to provide hardware, software and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons. With their combined resources, the companies hope to lower the financial and logistical barriers for the academic community to explore this emerging model of computing. The University of Washington was the first to join the initiative. A small number of universities will also pilot the program, including Carnegie-Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland. In the future, the program will be expanded to include additional researchers, educators and scientists.
Visit www.ibm.com/university/scholars/academicinitiative/ or www.google.com.
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Moves, adds & changes

Atempo names Mark Sutter chief technology officer and vice president of engineering
Atempo, Inc. announced a major addition to its operations with the appointment of Mark Sutter as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering.  A 25-year industry veteran, with 12 years in storage software, Sutter was most recently senior vice president of engineering and product management at CreekPath Systems (acquired by Opsware). Prior to joining CreekPath, Sutter held various executive engineering management positions with Seagate Software (acquired by VERITAS Software) and VERITAS Software (acquired by Symantec) where he managed the research and development activities for the VERITAS CommandCenter product line. In his role as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering, Sutter will focus on driving the development of new solutions for innovative cross-platform data protection and archiving. He will also manage Atempo’s global engineering development teams. Sutter holds a master’s degree in Operations Research from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science from The Pennsylvania State University.  
Visit www.atempo.com.
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Software

LogicLibrary announces Logidex 5.6
LogicLibrary announced the availability of Logidex 5.6. This release of Logidex, coupled with its integration with HP SOA Systinet, makes it easier than ever for developers, architects and business analysts to create and manage world-class business applications while simultaneously increasing the business value of their service-oriented architecture. Logidex’s core Software Development Asset (SDA) management and governance capabilities verify that service producers and architecture teams develop services in agreement with the organization's business and technical architectures. By integrating these core capabilities with those in HP SOA Systinet, a leading service-oriented architecture governance and lifecycle management platform, LogicLibrary provides an unsurpassed SOA service lifecycle governance solution.
Visit www.logiclibrary.com.
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Solutions

Riverbed partners with Interwoven
Riverbed Technology, Inc. announced it has partnered with Interwoven to provide customers with solutions that optimize the performance of back office processes and services and improve access to critical documents. The combination of Riverbed’s high-performance WDS solutions and Interwoven WorkSite, an award-winning solution for managing the lifecycle of client and engagement files, allows professional services firms with offices distributed around the globe to work more collaboratively, efficiently and cost effectively.  Riverbed’s WDS solutions enable organizations with more than one office to overcome a host of severe problems, including poor application performance and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding the performance of applications between distributed sites by five, 50 and in some cases up to 100 times, Riverbed’s award-winning Steelhead WDS products enable companies to consolidate IT, improve backup and replication processes to ensure data integrity, and improve staff productivity and collaboration.
Visit www.riverbed.com or www.interwoven.com.
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Training

The Training Associates announces 79% sales growth and search for strategic partner
The Training Associates (TTA), the privately held provider of training instructor outsourcing, announced that the company’s first and second quarter sales for 2007 grew 79% over sales for the previous period in 2006. The company’s gross margins also grew – up 86% over the same period in 2006. The company projects 2007 sales to reach $27M.  Because of TTA’s exceptional growth opportunities, the company has also announced that it has commissioned a top investment banking firm to begin the investigation of possible worldwide strategic partners in a partial or total sale. Such a partnership will enable the company to rapidly scale its unique business model by leveraging resources of a major player. Over the last four years, The Training Associates has shown accelerated growth and profitability. The company was recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. TTA is the only professional staffing company that specializes in recruiting, developing, managing, and deploying IT and professional business skills trainer consultants worldwide. The company offers training for more than 10,000 technology courses, including custom courses for proprietary technologies, and over 600 business skills courses. Technology partners include Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle and Cisco.
Visit www.thetrainingassociates.com.
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