Cisco
HP
Market
Mobility
New products
Optimization
Security
Services
Sun

Cisco

Cisco drives innovation in healthcare with enhanced mobility solutions
Cisco announced it has enhanced its Mobility Healthcare portfolio with a set of integrated solutions that combine Cisco's Unified Wireless Network with new Cisco Compatible Extensions and technology partner offerings in the areas of Mobile Care and Location-Aware services, as well as to Cisco's Secure Wireless foundation, to address the primary concerns of healthcare professionals today. The Cisco approach begins with the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, comprising of Cisco Aironet access points, wireless LAN (WLAN) controllers, the Cisco Wireless Control System and the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance - the industry's first location solution that tracks thousands of devices from the WLAN infrastructure. These components run over Cisco's Secure Wireless foundation, which extends the network to the point of care without compromising the integrity of business-critical data and applications, and helps ensure compliance with industry regulations. Finally, through the Cisco Compatible Extensions Program and its open application programming interface (API), Cisco teams with partners to enable value-added services in the areas of mobile care and location awareness that operate over the secure network.
Visit www.cisco.com.
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HP

HP hires Stephen DeWitt to lead Americas PC business
HP announced it has hired Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president for the Americas region of its Personal Systems Group (PSG), effective immediately. DeWitt, 42, reports to Todd Bradley, HP PSG executive vice president, and is responsible for driving the marketing, sales and operations strategy for the continued growth of PSG in the United States, Canada and Latin America. PSG’s portfolio includes PCs, mobile products, client virtualization and connected entertainment solutions, Internet services and support for consumers, small to mid-size business and enterprise customers. DeWitt joins HP from Azul Systems Inc., where he served as president and chief executive officer from its earliest stages and most recently as the company’s chairman. Prior to Azul, DeWitt was vice president and general manager of Content Delivery and Edge Computing at Sun Microsystems Inc., which he joined through the acquisition of Cobalt Networks Inc., where he was president and chief executive officer. He also has held executive positions at Cisco Systems and Symantec Corp. DeWitt holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.
Visit www.hp.com.
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Market

CFOs see recession through 2009
Optimism among U.S. CFOs has plummeted this quarter, with three-quarters of them predicting a recession at some point during 2008. Even grimmer: they expect inflation will rise to 3 percent this year. Grimmest: nearly 90 percent say the economy will not rebound until 2009. Those are some of the conclusions of the first quarter 2008 Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook survey, which culls the economic prognoses of more than 1,000 CFOs from a broad range of global public and private companies. Here are some more highlights—or lowlights—of the U.S. CFOs' responses:
•Fifty-four percent say the United States is now in recession.
•Optimism reached its lowest point since the study launched it optimism index six years ago.
•Weak consumer demand and turmoil in the credit and housing markets are the top macro-concerns of top finance executives. The high cost of labor ranked as the top internal concern.
•Credit conditions have directly hurt 35 percent of companies through decreased availability of credit and higher interest rates. Sixty percent of the companies have put off expansion plans in response to credit market unrest.
• The CFOs expect capital spending to increase only 3.3 percent, while price inflation rises 3 percent over the next 12 months.
• Only 13 percent think the U.S. economy will hit bottom and begin to rebound in 2008. Another 40 percent say the rebound will occur in the first half of 2009, while 47 percent feel recovery is more than 15 months off.
Visit www.cfo.com/magazine.



North American contact center applications markets poised for greater growth
The North American contact center applications markets made considerable progress in 2006, growing by a healthy 6.9 percent. Although inbound contact routing (ICR) is the dominant component of the applications market, the interactive voice response systems (IVR) and multimedia systems (MM) markets are likely to achieve maximum growth in the next two to three years. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, North American Contact Center Applications Markets, finds that the markets earned revenues of $2.49 billion in 2006 and estimates this to reach $3.67 billion in 2013. As expected, the tier one contact center solutions vendors lead the aggregated market share.
Visit www.contactcenters.frost.com.
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Mobility

De-Fi Mobile's BroadSoft deployment manages more than 20 million subscribers
De-Fi Mobile Ltd. announced successful completion of a scalability demonstration of Broadsoft's BroadWorks communication and messaging platform with IBM BladeCenter HT. During the series of tests at the IBM PSSC Network Transformation Center in Montpellier, France, the demonstration showed that De-Fi Mobile's network can handle 20 million users and up to 40 million Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCAs) on the IBM BladeCenter HT. The Montpellier trail was a proof of concept to demonstrate the scalability and reliability Tier 1 service providers can expect when deploying BroadWorks on IBM BladeCenter. De-Fi Mobile now joins the ranks of telecom giants Ericsson, Cox Communications and T-Systems in delivering world-class reliability, robustness and scalability to customers who choose to De-Fi.
Visit www.defimobile.com, www.BroadSoft.com or www.ibm.com/bladecenter.
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New products

EXTOL announces EDI Integrator Version 6.2
EXTOL International announced the release of the latest version of EXTOL EDI Integrator (EEI), Release 6.2. The highlight of the release is the capability to configure dashboards for viewing real time, specific data about partner transactions, processes, compliance and events. The new feature allows business views of supply chain activity and integration processes supporting orders, shipments, deliveries, payments, etc. Dashboards can be configured to meet individual needs down to the single user level. EDI Integrator, the innovation leader in EDI software for the i5/OS environment, integrates seamlessly with user application data, regardless of platform. It automates processing of both standard and non-standard business transactions, in a straight-through fashion.
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Optimization

Stampede Technologies announces TurboGold Enterprise Edition for Linux servers
Stampede Technologies, Inc. announced the release of TurboGold Enterprise Edition Release 3 (TGEE 3.0) for Linux-based servers. TGEE 3.0 improves performance and robustness of Notes and Domino applications by reducing bandwidth consumption by up to 85 percent, regardless of network infrastructure, giving enterprises a competitive edge. Stampede has always supported multiple server platforms for TGEE, including Windows 32 servers, IBM iSeries and pSeries servers. With this new release customers now have the flexibility to deploy TGEE on an even broader range of state-of-the-art enterprise servers. TurboGold Enterprise Edition is an enterprise-class solution that provides significant performance improvements and advanced user administration capabilities. It incorporates services for setting policies for replication and synchronization, Web acceleration, multicasting and database priority assignments, and enables users to easily distribute them throughout the Notes infrastructure. Along with improved storage management, these features bring added value to enterprises focused on creating more efficient operations and improving bottom-line results.
Visit www.stampede.com.
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Security

PowerTech releases state of IBM System i security study
The PowerTech Group, Inc. released its fifth annual review of the state of security on IBM’s System i platform, based on the results of over 200 system audits that were conducted by PowerTech over the last 12 months. According to industry research, the System i is used by more than 90 percent of the Fortune 1000 alone, and is known to host sensitive and confidential data such as credit card and Social Security numbers. Although IBM has architected the System i with industry leading security capabilities, the PowerTech research shows that the System i security is often poorly configured and poorly managed by companies that use it. PowerTech Vice President and CTO John Earl remarked, “Once again, this study demonstrates that System i shops are very vulnerable to loss and disclosure of their critical data. That’s the bad news. The good news is that many of these exposures are easily corrected. We publish this study to draw attention to these problems so that they can be addressed.” Listed below are a few examples of the study findings:

• 68% of systems allow any user to change data on the System i using PC applications like MS Excel and MS Access. These systems also did not audit this vulnerability, which effectively hides it from oversight.

• Out of an average of 751 users, 9% of all users have privileged (root level) access authority.

• 30% of systems are not using the system security auditing tool inherent in the system.

• Over half of the systems have more than 16 users with default passwords (Password = User name) that could be easily determined by any attacker.

The complete results and analysis are published in a whitepaper, which can be downloaded from the PowerTech website at www.powertech.com/study2008.asp.
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Services

VAI offers expanded services to IBM System i users
VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.) 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: 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; and S2K Enterprise Portal Jump Start.   VAI is an IBM Premier Business Partner.
Visit www.vai.net.
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Sun

Sun Microsystems joins other industry leaders as Platinum Member of The Open Group
The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium focused on open standards and global interoperability within and between enterprises, announced that Sun Microsystems, Inc. has joined other IT industry leaders - Capgemini, EDS, HP, HSBC, IBM and NEC - as a Platinum Member of the organization. In this capacity, Sun will play a leading role in advancing best practices, standards and professional certification programs related to enterprise architects and IT Specialists, including The Open Group's Architecture Framework (TOGAF), IT Architect Certification (ITAC) and the IT Specialist Certification (ITSC).
Visit www.sun.com or www.opengroup.org.
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