Awards
HP
IBM
iSeries
Memory
RFID
Security
Wireless

Awards

HPCwire announces awards
HPCwire revealed the winners of HPCwire’s annual Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards at the 2007 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC07) in Reno, Nevada. HPCwire has designated two categories of Awards: (1) Readers' Choice, where winners have been determined by a poll of HPCwire readers; and (2) Editors' Choice, where winners have been determined by votes of a panel of recognized HPC luminaries, contributing editors from the global HPC ecosystem, and HPCwire’s editors. Some of the HPCwire 2007 Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards:

Best Price/Performance HPC Hardware Solution
     Readers' Choice Award Recipient: Rackable Systems
     Editors' Choice Award Recipients: AMD Quad-Core Opteron

Best Price/Performance HPC Storage Technology or Product
     Readers' Choice Award Recipient: Panasas ActiveStor
     Editors' Choice Award Recipient: Sun Fire x4500 Server

Best Price/Performance Visualization Product of Technology
     Readers' Choice Award Recipient: HP Scalable Visualization Array
     Editors' Choice Award Recipient: HP's Parallel Compositing
      Library

Most Important HPC Networking Product or Technology
     Readers' Choice Award Recipient: Cisco
     Editors' Choice Award Recipient: Woven Systems Ethernet Fabric
      Switch

Most Significant New HPC Hardware Product
     Readers' Choice Award Recipient: IBM Blue Gene/P
     Editors' Choice Award Recipient: NVIDIA Tesla

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HP

HP spreads Virtual Connect to 1,600 servers
HP announced the arrival of an addition to Virtual Connect technology that allows customers to set up flexible relationships between a large number of virtual servers and physical storage boxes. Since February, HP has offered Virtual Connect as part of its c-Class blade server package. The technology proves unique among the Tier 1 vendors in that it handles the mapping of storage area network connections to blade systems. Up until this point, however, Virtual Connect has only applied to a single chassis. A customer could move virtual servers around the various physical blades in the chassis, and the virtual machines would stay connected to the right back-end storage volumes. (In short, Virtual Connect ties Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses and Fibre Channel Worldwide Names (WWNs) to server bays.) HP hoped to extend Virtual Connect to multiple chassis once it polished off a firmware upgrade. That firmware upgrade has arrived along with the Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager package. Now customers can perform the same mapping functions across up to 100 c-Class systems - or 1,600 blade servers. The c-Class system has pushed HP into a clear leadership position in the blade server market and Virtual Connect should only help maintain this momentum.
Visit www.hp.com.


NetScout works with HP to develop solutions for network operations
NetScout Systems, Inc. announced it is working with HP to develop a tight integration with its technologies and HP Network Node Manager i-series (NNMi). The combined solutions will bring the power of advanced, application-aware performance alarming, analysis and troubleshooting into the front line of IT support for both enterprise and service provider networks. The solutions will also enable early warning of application performance degradations and an integrated work flow for problem detection and root cause analysis, providing an edge to businesses in assuring quality delivery of applications and services on the network. Service providers looking for new ways to respond to degradations in performance of services such as mobile IP, IPTV, or VoIP can benefit from the integration of NetScout technologies and HP NNMi. The combined technologies can detect these performance degradations, resulting in improved customer experience and a reduction in revenue and subscriber loss.
Visit www.netscout.com.
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IBM

IBM acquires storage analysis firm NovusCG
IBM announced that it has acquired NovusCG, a privately held company that was founded in 2000 and has about 100 employees. Novus specializes in business intelligence and storage analytics. Novus' offerings include Management Complexity Factor (MCF), a patented framework and methodology that weighs eight metrics in evaluating an IT environment. MCF allows IT managers to understand the operational costs of such infrastructure components as storage, backup and disaster recovery. The company's Enterprise Standardization Program is a collection of tools and best practices for streamlining operations in heterogeneous environments. The best practices are delivered through a Wiki portal with defined workflows for storage and backup operations. Storage Enterprise Resource Planner (SERP) provides "an unprecedented view" of storage use at the line-of-business level, IBM said, allowing managers to spot unnecessary duplicate storage while enabling chargeback and capacity planning. SERP will be integrated with IBM's Total Productivity Center (TPC) and the rest of IBM's system storage portfolio.
Visit www.ibm.com.
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iSeries

Abacus Solutions launches comprehensive iSeries services
Abacus Solutions announced its expanded offering of iSeries services. Abacus now delivers extensive iSeries services ranging from system migrations and upgrades to backup recovery, performance tuning and general iSeries maintenance. iSeries services from Abacus Solutions include: system migration and hardware/operating system upgrades; PTFs; system consolidation; independent auxiliary storage pool; LPARs-logical solutions; disaster recovery planning, testing, solutions; disk arm calculation;  iSeries maintenance and performance tuning; backup recovery-disk, tape, 0 down time; server hardware clustering; assessments; business continuity; optimization; problem resolution; and security solutions.
Visit www.abacusllc.com.
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Memory

FAA turns to MemoryStore.com to upgrade America’s air traffic control system
When the Federal Aviation Administration needed to upgrade computer memory in the 1,500 servers that control the nation’s air traffic, it could have turned to manufacturers in Europe, Korea, China or Japan. Instead, the FAA chose computer memory manufactured in the U.S.A. by MemoryStore.com, located in Philadelphia. MemoryStore.com manufactured 1,500 IBM compatible 1GB RAM upgrades for the FAA servers that manage 50,000 aircrafts carrying 1.8 million passengers daily. These mission-critical server memory upgrades passed the FAA’s rigorous testing, while saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The memory upgrades were required when the FAA received a new version of its ERAM software, which controls aircraft flying in the National Airspace System (NAS). The software, which runs on 1,500 IBM pSeries 615 servers, required increased RAM requirements to 2GB, double what the older IBM computers had. The FAA plans to roll out its MemoryStore.com memory upgrades in the country’s 20 Air Route Traffic Control Centers by March 2008. When complete, the entire air traffic control system will be upgraded to 2GB, representing 50 percent of the redundant system. The other 50 percent will be handled by 1,500 new servers that were delivered by IBM with 2GB of RAM preinstalled.
Visit www.memorystore.com.
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RFID

Hastings hospital to track patients electronically
Patients admitted to the emergency department of Hawke's Bay hospital in Hastings will be tagged with RFID chips so their movements can be automatically monitored by wireless scanners. The hospital will be the first in New Zealand to test the futuristic technology. Hawke's Bay District Health Board hopes information collected by the electronic tags will identify bottlenecks in the hospital system and help it better manage beds and roster staff. Where RFID technology has been used overseas, patients are usually tagged using wrist bands. The long-awaited RFID trial has been organized by the HealthIT Cluster, an organization whose members include about 40 health IT firms. The RFID monitoring system will be linked to Hawke's Bay hospital's PAS patient management system, so capacity planning and bed management systems are automatically updated when patients are admitted and discharged. The movement patients or manual scans could trigger messages to be automatically sent to clinical staff equipped with Vocera phones. These are voice-activated mobile phones sold in New Zealand by IBM that are designed for hands-free operation and which can send messages over a hospital's local area network, without incurring toll call charges.
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Security

IBM approves iSeries AS/400's information security solution from Above Security
IBM approved Above Security's CSC2 application as an auditing engine for the log monitoring and information security incident management of the iSeries (AS/400) mainframe. Corporations dealing within the financial, health care, insurance and banking sectors as well as publicly traded companies are currently struggling to attain compliance with various regulations. These corporations can now benefit from Above Security's solution that facilitates standards compliance to information security governance rules. Above Security, helped by one of its customers and by IBM, released the CSC2 application, a solution allowing the support of various controls imposed by norms such as Sarbannes-Oxley, HIPAA, GLBA & Basel II. On every specific interval, CSC2 logs in the databases of the AS/400 and then centralizes, pre-analyzes, compresses and presents the audit information in a centralized and in a normalized fashion. CSC2 can generate alert and automated action based on events observed within the audit repository to prevent fraud, attack, hacking, to support prompt investigation and troubleshooting.
Visit www.abovesecurity.com.
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Wireless

Cisco Capital funds wireless healthcare installation
Cisco Capital has provided a lease facility to King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for the installation of a campus-wide wireless infrastructure by Redstone Converged Solutions. The solution, which will be deployed during the next twelve months, will supplement the existing hardwired network and provide complete coverage across all internal and external areas of the site. The network will enable many demanding communication and productivity applications, including wireless telephony and asset tracking using RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology. RFID tagging, delivered by third party provider, Airetrak, will facilitate the tracking and location of equipment around the hospital campus. The asset tracking solution will use Cisco's 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliances. Other network based projects will include the deployment of voice activated paging systems, mobile communications devices which will help advise medical staff to review information such as X-rays to colleagues for second opinions, and increased use of tablet PCs and Computers on Wheels (COWs) for supporting ward rounds.
Visit www.cisco.com.
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