Upcoming Meeting Notice

The Association of Service and Computer Dealers International (ASCDI) is a 30 year old, worldwide non-profit organization made up of companies who provide technology solutions, technical support or value added services to the business community.

Members and non-members are invited to learn how to grow your business, find new business opportunities, hear from industry representatives and enjoy some fabulous networking events at our conferences:


2010 EUROPEAN CONFERENCE
June 23 - 25, 2010
Dublin, Ireland - Radisson Blu Royal Hotel

2010 SUMMER REGIONAL RECEPTION
July 14, 2010
Minneapolis, MN

2010 FALL CONFERENCE
October 6 - 8, 2010
San Francisco, CA

Click here for more information on ALL ASCDI MEETINGS, to view the agendas, lodging details, attendee lists and to REGISTER AT THE EARLY BIRD RATE.

Broadband
HP
IBM
Intermec
Leasing
Op-Ed
Storage
Trends

Broadband

US vs. world in Net speed
After ranking third in the world a decade ago, the United States has dropped to 15th in the proportion of citizens receiving fast Web service, or broadband, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. South Korea, Iceland and Germany are among the countries that ranked higher in 2009, the Paris-based group said. Connections were faster and cheaper in 12 countries, including Hungary and Denmark. The FCC is proposing to spend $16 billion in the next decade to close the gap. By boosting wireless service, shifting federal subsidies and encouraging investment, the FCC National Broadband Plan aims to give 100 million homes the same connection speeds available today in Portugal and Japan. By some measures, the U.S. is lower than in the OECD survey. Last month, speedtest.net, a Seattle-based service embraced by the FCC, found that the U.S. ranked 29th of 178 countries in download speeds, behind Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Countries that rank higher than the U.S. tend to be densely populated, use subsidies and promote computer use, said Robert Atkinson, president of the Washington-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which studies innovation policy.
Visit www.oecd.org.
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HP

Taiwan market: HP launches 20 new business notebooks
Hewlett-Packard has launched twenty new business notebooks in Taiwan including high-end EliteBook, mid-range ProBook and entry-level models under its HP or Compaq brands. Of the seven high-end EliteBooks HP has launched, six are manufactured by Compal Electronics and one by Inventec, while the other nine ProBooks and four entry-level models are shared by Quanta Computer and Wistron. Commenting on Europe's financial crisis, HP Taiwan vice president and personal computing systems group manager Monty Wong said that the company is not affected much by the issue since it has already formed a complete lineup for all its products and is capable of fully satisfying different levels of demand. In addition, HP also has a strong channel network in each regional market and fluctuations in a single market will not affect the company seriously. Market watchers have confirmed Wong's statement as first-tier notebook makers' order volumes from HP have not fluctuated much despite several other notebook vendors reducing their orders.
Visit www.hp.com.
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IBM

IBM wins big deal in India
IBM announced a 10-year, multi-million dollar agreement with India-based ElectraCard Services (ECS), a leading provider of software solutions for electronic payment systems. Under the terms of agreement, IBM will provide technical support for ECS's disaster recovery infrastructure, giving ECS the scope to focus on core business while lessening its capital expenditures. Armed with IBM’s solution support, ECS’s electra solution suite will enable its clients, including State Bank of India, Deutsche Bank, Life Insurance Corporation of India, Corporation Bank and many other leading private national and international banks to better manage their growing customer base.
Visit www.ibm.com.



IBM, Samsung, ARM Partnership pushes Linux smartphones
Chip designer ARM and five of its major partners have formed a joint venture to tackle the headache of trying to develop smartphone processors for the many incompatible versions of the mobile Linux operating system. Linaro, a non-profit software engineering company, will develop tools and low-level OS code that would be common to ARM-based system-on-chip products. Such technology is expected to attract developers by making it easier for them to dedicate more resources to the user interface and other higher-level software that make their products stand out to consumers. Joining ARM in Linaro are Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments. By launching the joint venture, the companies are also gearing up for a pending battle in the mobile arena with Intel.
Visit www.ibm.com.



Prolifics offers free clinics at IBM's Innovate 2010
Prolifics, the largest end-to-end systems integrator specializing in IBM technologies and Winner of the 2009 Rational Award for Outstanding Customer Solution, offered free clinics to attendees of IBM's Innovate 2010 Conference in Orlando, Florida on such topics as "Focusing on Optimizing Development Team Efficiency" and "Application Testing." Prolifics is highly skilled in several IBM Rational products including Rational Application Developer, Rational Team Concert, Rational Software Architect, Rational AppScan, Rational Quality Manager and offers Tool Assessments and Methodology Reviews to maximize customers' software investments. Greg Hodgkinson, Practice Director for Lifecycle, Tools, and Methodology, recently published a blog entry on Prolifics' Technical Blog demonstrating why Prolifics Rational Team Concert is best of breed for automating the build, deployment and testing of WebSphere applications (http://prolificstech.blogspot.com/).
Visit www.prolifics.com.
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Intermec

Intermec CN50 receives upgrade and expands to EDGE Networks
Intermec Technologies announced enhancements to its most advanced rugged mobile computer, the CN50. The improvements double the computer's memory and provide expanded scanning options to give customers more choice when configuring the high performance voice and data communication solution. The CN50 now comes with 256 MB of memory, which enables faster responsiveness and allows customers to use multiple simultaneous applications, including applications with a large database or applications that use RAM-based virtual machines. Another enhancement is the flexibility to deploy the EA11 1D/2D area imager optimized for scan intensive applications, or the EA21 area imager that is designed for barcode reading as well as full page document imaging with Intermec's eMDI software.
Visit www.intermec.com.
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Leasing

GreatAmerica and HTG Peer Groups announce sponsorship agreement
GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation announced that it has entered into a sponsorship agreement with HTG Peer Groups. HTG is a peer organization based in Harlan, Iowa comprised of 240 IT solution providers representing the US and international markets. This relationship as a sponsoring vendor of HTG Peer Groups will enable GreatAmerica to educate technology solution providers on options available to integrate financing programs into their approach to market. The GreatAmerica business model places the IT solution provider at its center and is based on learning the challenges and opportunities faced by its channel partners. It identifies opportunities such as the creation of lifecycle financing tools that are more aligned with the way IT solution providers go to market and sell.
Visit www.greatamerica.com or www.htgpeergroups.com.
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Op-Ed

PC 'on the skids' as Apple gains ascendancy
by Steven Vaughan-Nichols

On May 26, Apple's market capitalization stood at $223 billion. That took it, for the first time, higher than Microsoft, which had a market cap of $219.3 billion. Apple, not Microsoft, not Google, was at the top of the technology business mountain. And that marked the end of an era: The PC is no longer the center of the computing universe.

The PC: August 12, 1981 -- May 26, 2010. RIP.

The powerhouse of the computing revolution was born when IBM released the first IBM PC in August 1981. It died when Apple took the market lead from Microsoft. Yes, of course, there were PCs before the IBM PC. I used Zilog Z-80-based microcomputers running CP/M back in the late '70s. But it was the IBM PC that moved PCs from things that only computer fans would use to essential parts of most business offices. And there will still be PCs years from now. You might scoff at my proclamation about the PC's demise, but the fact that Windows-based PCs still outsell Macs by a ratio of about 24 to 1 -- PC sales of 65 million vs. 3.1 million Macs in the latest quarter -- is really quite irrelevant. This isn't a matter of Macs finally outselling Windows or Linux-based PCs. That's never going to happen.
Read entire Op-Ed here.
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Storage

Storage revenue on the rebound, IDC says
The storage business recovered strongly in the first quarter, showing clear signs that enterprises have shaken off the effects of the worldwide recession, at least when it comes to their fast-growing storage needs, IDC said. Factory revenues for disk storage systems grew 18.8 percent from a year earlier to US$6.7 billion, the research company reported. That figure includes both internal storage -- at least three disks within a server -- and external storage systems. The figure also includes solid-state disks, the flash-based alternative to spinning disks that is being integrated into some storage systems. For external platforms alone, revenue grew about 17 percent to $5 billion. The capacity of storage systems shipped in the first quarter grew 55.2 percent from a year earlier, totaling 3,397 petabytes, according to IDC. Demand for bytes grew even during the recession, with revenue declines probably caused by users turning to less expensive platforms. First-quarter revenue rose for all major categories of external storage, led by SANs (storage area networks) connected via iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface). Sales of those networks, which can use familiar Ethernet technology, rose 45.7 percent from the previous year.
Visit www.idc.com.
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Trends

Explosive market growth in the US for Mobile Internet Devices/ Tablets and 3DTVs
Demand for consumer electronic (CE) devices is soaring in the US – especially in key segments like 3DTVs and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)/Tablets. Year-over-year shipment growth for these two segments will be 142% and 231%, respectively, between 2010 and 2011, reports In-Stat. 3DTVs and MIDS/Tablets will also represent a bright spot for CE manufacturers and content providers because the installed base for these segments will continue to expand steadily.

Recent research by In-Stat found:
-The US installed base for smartphones to reach 198 million by 2013.
-Mobile PCs will continue to lead the computing category in units shipped through 2013.
-Despite many bright spots in the US CE market, maturing segments like portable media players (PMPs) and desktop PCs will show declining growth rates through 2013.
-By 2013, there will be 1.9 billion installed CE devices in the US.
Visit www.in-stat.com.
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