Economy
Fraud
HP
IBM
Market
People
Software
Storage
Sun

Economy

CEO confidence declines to seven-year low
The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence, which had declined to 44 in the third quarter of 2007, fell to 39 in the final quarter of 2007 (a reading of more than 50 points reflects more positive than negative responses). The last time the Measure fell below 40 was in the final quarter of 2000 when it fell to 31. CEOs' assessment of current economic conditions was considerably less positive, with just 7% of CEOs -- down from 14% last quarter -- stating economic conditions had improved. In assessing their own industries, business leaders were also less optimistic. Approximately 15% claim conditions are better, down from approximately 17% in the third quarter. Looking ahead six months, the outlook has turned more negative. Currently, 16% of business leaders expect economic conditions to improve in the next six months, down from 20% last quarter. Expectations for their own industries are also less upbeat, with only 17% anticipating an improvement, down from 27% last quarter.
Visit www.conference-board.org.
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Fraud

Acxiom Digital steps up battle against email fraud
Acxiom Corporation announced that Acxiom Digital, a leading provider of integrated digital marketing solutions for Global 2000 enterprises, has implemented the DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) email authentication standard on its IMPACT platform, providing its clients and their customers added protection against email fraud and phishing attacks. The company is one of the first email service providers to implement the DKIM standard and provide the technology to its customers. DKIM, which is an open-source standard, employs a cryptographic signature that can be decrypted by a receiving ISP. This enables the ISP to verify the sender of an email and then make a determination of whether that sender is trustworthy. Further, the DKIM "fingerprint" that is placed in each message allows receiving ISPs to verify that the message has not been tampered with due to phishing scams or email fraud. Messages that have been compromised can be flagged accordingly. DKIM combines features of separate authentication technologies originally developed by Yahoo! and Cisco and improves on the anti-forgery and anti-phishing capabilities of the earlier authentication technologies.
Visit www.acxiomdigital.com.
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HP

HP fires shot in network storage battle
HP is throwing down the gauntlet before Network Appliance (NetApp) about how it intends to grab customers and market traction. HP said its acquisition of PolyServe, which it bought for a reported $200 million in February 2006, is the linchpin in its quest to be a major player in the high-end network attached storage (NAS) space. This acquisition followed a partnership of two years, during which HP melded the technology into its StorageWorks EVA FileServices product. PolyServe's application consolidates and virtualizes NAS in Windows and Linux environments and works with industry standard hardware. The software lets file or database servers be consolidated into a single, shared storage pool. In addition to providing clustering applications, PolyServe also gives HP a high-performance consolidation platform for databases in the HP technology portfolio. The HP-PolyServe deal allowed HP to extend NAS technology to servers, creating the Enterprise File Services Clustered Gateway. HP then enhanced the software to support block as well file storage and began shipping the StorageWorks EVA File Services, which was bundled with the vendor's storage area network (SAN) array.
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IBM

VAI offers expanded services to IBM System i users
Vormittag Associates, Inc. (VAI), an IBM Premier Business Partner, announced expanded service offerings for IBM System i users with the release of VAI’s Service Bundles. The Service Bundles, prepackaged groups of services required in today’s technology environment, include technical support and consultation for issues pertaining to network security, performance tuning, operating system upgrades and e-business integration. VAI’s eight Service Bundle packages include fixed pricing, discrete deliverables and defined completion dates.  They include:

• IBM i5/OS On-Site Upgrade
• Remote PTF Installation
• S2K WMS and RF Analysis
• Infrastructure and Security Assessment
• IBM i5/OS Performance Tuning and Analysis
• Ariba Punch-Out Quick Start
• Web Consulting Quick Start
• S2K Enterprise Portal Jump Start

Visit www.vai.net.



LT04 with encryption on iSeries
The announcement from IBM that they would market embedded encryption in their new LTO4 tape drive appeared to offer the way forward in dealing with this continued loss of private and confidential data. When looking at this IBM offering in detail several issues become clear.

The LTO4 with encryption is not available with the SCSI interface for the iSeries; this forces users to add a dedicated fibre channel IOP. LTO4 encryption for iSeries is only supported with library based units; stand-alone drives are not supported. The encryption will only work when using LTO4 media. Using encryption with the LTO4 on the iSeries also requires the use of Backup Recovery Media Services (BRMS). The question will be just what to do with existing media. The data on these tapes may need to be retained for a given period but it is essential to ensure the data on it is secured.

The Java based Encryption Key Management (EKM) package for the LTO4 encryption requires a separate server or partition (LPAR) to run; this software itself may provide potential security flaws dependant on how it is implemented because anywhere the security keys can be accessed outside of the server is a possible weakness. With the IBM solution, the iSeries needs to be operational with the OS loaded, and the key management server needs to be up and running before restoring any encrypted data.
For a full version of this article go to http://www.theq3.com/lto4.php.

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Market

Gartner says HP still top worldwide PC maker
Technology research firm Gartner Inc. said Hewlett-Packard Co. strengthened its grip on the title of the world's No. 1 PC company in 2007, while top rival Dell Inc. added to its top position in the U.S. market during the fourth quarter of the year. According to its preliminary results, Gartner said that HP shipped 49.4 million PCs in 2007, a 30% increase from 2006, and giving the company 18.2% of the total worldwide market. Dell came in second place with a 14.3% market share, but its shipments of 38.7 million units rose just 1.7% from a year ago. The rest of the top five worldwide vendors included Acer Inc., Lenovo Group and Toshiba. Total worldwide PC shipments for the year reached 271.1 million units, up 13.4% from 2006. The Europe, Middle East and Africa regions made up the largest PC market in 2007, with strong growth coming from Eastern Europe as well as Africa and the Middle East. The Asia-Pacific market became the second-largest PC region during the year.
Visit www.gartner.com.
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People

Arbitech announces Mark Dunlap as VP of Product Development
Arbitech, LLC announced the addition of Mark Dunlap as its Vice President of Product Development. Mark is a veteran of the computer hardware and components industry, bringing years of product development and senior management experience to Arbitech. He comes to Arbitech from Agio Solutions where he served as Executive Vice President the past three years and VP of Sales the year prior. Mark was instrumental in increasing Agio’s product offerings from 4 to 22 vendors, developing a successful customer base and implementing a global presence. Mark has also held key executive roles at Resilien, where he served as General Manager, as well as BLT Electronics where he was COO. “I’m extremely proud to join the Arbitech family. In my new role I look to complement Arbitech’s existing client relationships through product diversification and new vendor relationships,” states Dunlap. “Additionally, I will help the company enter new verticals and capture new revenue streams based on managed services and digital based products.”
Visit www.arbitech.com.
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Software

IBM software for Apple
E-mail software from IBM will be available on Apple iPhones and iPod Touch devices under a new partnership that brings together two big rivals of Microsoft. IBM plans a formal announcement of the Lotus Notes e-mail package for Apple's portable devices at its Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Florida. The software, which requires use of IBM's Domino e-mail server program, will be free for users who already have a Lotus Web-access licence and start at $39 per year for new users. IBM also plans to release Lotus Notes and the free Lotus Symphony "productivity" package – which includes documents, spreadsheets and other Microsoft Office-like software – for Apple's Macintosh computers.
Visit www.ibm.com.
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Storage

EMC in major storage performance breakthrough
EMC Corporation became the first enterprise storage vendor to integrate flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) into its core product portfolio. Solid state flash drives utilize flash memory to store and retrieve data, yielding response times that are an order of magnitude faster than the fastest hard disk drives and require dramatically less power to run. The EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 storage system is the only enterprise storage system available on the market today to leverage this technology, which has been tested by EMC for the past year, to deliver ultra-high performance for mission-critical applications. The flash drives for the Symmetrix DMX-4 system have been purpose built to EMC's exacting specifications and use single-layer cell (SLC) flash technology combined with sophisticated controllers to achieve ultra fast read/write performance, high reliability and data integrity. EMC has further optimized the Symmetrix DMX-4 operating software to take advantage of the full power and value that flash storage technology brings to high- performance storage environments, including the ability to easily provision, manage, replicate and move data between flash drives and traditional Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives in the same array.
Visit www.emc.com.
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Sun

Sun to acquire MySQL for $1B
Sun Microsystems Inc. has come to an agreement to purchase open software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, padding out the server maker’s services with the company that provides technology to some of the heavy hitting websites worldwide. In separate announcements, Sun said that its second quarter revenue would just exceed the Wall Street projections, saying profit would fall on the high end of analysts’ estimations. This first round of results was released ahead of schedule. The company is paying $800 million in cash and taking $200 million in options under the deal to acquire MySQL. The firm makes open-source database software used by Google, Facebook and Nokia to name a few. The acquisition will be closed in the third or fourth quarter. Sun is also expected to gain a net income of $230-$265 million which is equivalent to 28-32 cents a share. The company also confirmed that it expects to make $3.6 billion in sales in the second quarter.
Visit www.sun.com.
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