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

2010 EUROPEAN HOLIDAY PARTY
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Aalborg, Denmark

2011 USA WINTER RECEPTION
January 13, 2011
Atlanta, GA

2011 ASIA CONFERENCE
February 16 - 18, 2011
Singapore

2011 USA WINTER CONFERENCE
March 23 – 25, 2011
New Orleans, LA

2011 EUROPEAN SPRING RECEPTION
Thursday, 12 May 2011
London, England

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.

ASCDI in the news
HP
IBM
Power
Printers
Security

ASCDI in the Wall Street Journal

Tough Times for Independent IT Dealers
By EMILY MALTBY

Sales at XS International Inc., a 10-employee company that sells refurbished electronics like computers, disk drives and servers, have shrunk 50% in the past two years. The problem, the company says, is that it no longer qualifies for roughly half the government contracts it once did. XS International is an independent seller whose business, while legitimate and legal, doesn't follow certain requirements set up by large manufacturers like Cisco Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. to qualify as an "authorized" dealer of those companies' equipment.

Authorized companies, in most cases, receive inventory directly from the manufacturers and set prices based on manufacturer's suggested retail price. Independent resellers sell used, refurbished or "gray market" equipment—factory-sealed equipment purchased on the open market—and set the prices for those products.

Independent dealers say large manufacturers in recent years have encouraged customers, including the government, to buy goods through authorized channels only, which the manufacturers say helps ensure the merchandise isn't counterfeit. The global information-technology industry loses about $100 billion a year to counterfeiters, according to the Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement, a group formed in 2001 that now represents more than a dozen manufacturers including Cisco, H-P, Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.
Read entire article.
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HP

HP completes acquisition of Fortify Software
HP announced it has completed its acquisition of Fortify Software. The combination bridges static and dynamic security analysis across the application life cycle to help clients proactively reduce business risk against malicious attacks. With Fortify Software’s expertise and offerings, HP will offer a best-in-class solution that allows clients to properly address application security from development through operations, and scale to a Center of Excellence program. The acquisition of Fortify enhances HP’s application life cycle strategy and enriches the HP Secure Advantage portfolio by adding a complete application security offering. With this addition, HP will deliver one of the most comprehensive security capabilities for securing mission-critical applications in heterogeneous environments.
Visit www.hp.com.



HP and Oracle reaffirm commitment to long-term strategic partnership
HP and Oracle Corp. reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership and the resolution of litigation regarding Mark V. Hurd’s employment at Oracle. While the terms of the settlement are confidential, Mr. Hurd will adhere to his obligations to protect HP’s confidential information while fulfilling his responsibilities at Oracle. The agreement also reaffirms HP and Oracle’s commitment to delivering the best products and solutions to their more than 140,000 shared customers. “HP and Oracle have been important partners for more than 20 years and are committed to working together to provide exceptional products and service to our customers,” said Cathie Lesjak, chief financial officer and interim chief executive officer, HP. “We look forward to collaborating with Oracle in the future.”
Visit www.hp.com
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IBM

IBM's chief exec has no plans to retire
Samuel Palmisano, the chairman and chief executive officer of IBM, who turns sixty next year, said that the company's informal rule for top executives to retire at the age of sixty was not cast in stone and he had no plans to step down in 2011. In addition, he criticized rival HP for not investing in development of new technologies and services. For many years chief executive officers of IBM had a tradition to retire at the age of sixty. The policy is not published, though, and Mr. Palmisano has served IBM quite successfully and it is unlikely that he would be forced out. Since taking the CEO position eight years ago, Mr. Palmisano has sold personal computer business to Lenovo and further redesigned hardware businesses to focus IBM on more lucrative software and services through more than 100 acquisitions. At present IBM is the third-largest software maker behind Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. Still, IBM earns less money than HP or Hitachi despite having more employees than the former and the same amount as the latter. Under Mr. Palmisano, IBM has continued to invest about 6% of its revenue in R&D, including $5.8 billion last year.
Visit www.ibm.com.



IBM delivers yet another hardware management console
IBM rolled out another in a long line of Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs). In announcement letter 110-146, the details of the 7402-CR6 iteration of the rack-mounted HMCs debuts. The new HMC is based on a single quad-core Intel Xeon processor spinning at 2.53 GHz with 12 MB of L2 cache memory; the machine has 4 GB of main memory, one 2.5-inch SATA disk, one SATA CD/DVD drive, four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and two peripheral slots (one PCI-Express and one PCI-X). The machine can be equipped with a modem for remote electronic support, but IBM recommends a broadband link. The HMC uses the V7R720 version of the HMC licensed internal code, which allows for memory mirroring for the system firmware and allows command-line support for IBM i network installation. If you are moving to Power7 iron, you will need to have an HMC at the CR3 or higher level for rack-mounted HMCs and at the C05 level or higher for deskside HMCs. Multiple System i, System p, and Power Systems servers can have their PowerVM hypervisors managed from a single console.
Visit www.ibm.com.



New releases of IBM Power systems and solutions further benefit COMMON community
COMMON embraces the new POWER7 machines from IBM as they will continue to strengthen this community. These new technologies prove to this membership that IBM is committed to ongoing investment and enhancement to their Power Systems line of business, which includes the IBM i and AIX platforms. Included in this IBM release are:
IBM Power 795, a 256-core system with 1024 threads that is four times faster than previous generations of IBM Power series systems and five to seven times faster than any rival offering; IBM Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 Express models which are the lowest priced; POWER7 energy efficient systems for midsize businesses; IBM i Solution Editions for the core business needs of midsize clients, featuring software from Infor, Lawson, Oracle JD Edwards and SAP; and IBM i Edition Express for BladeCenter S which Integrates IBM i and Windows blades in the same chassis for consolidation of web, database and application workloads. COMMON is the world’s largest users group of midrange IBM and IBM-compatible technology.
Visit www.ibm.com or www.common.org.
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Power

Emerson completes Chloride acquisition 
Emerson announced it completed its acquisition of Chloride Group PLC, which now joins strong global product brands within Emerson Network Power. This acquisition helps drive Emerson’s long-term global growth strategy for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and integrated data center solutions. As previously announced, the purchase price was approximately $1.5 billion. Chloride’s leading UPS technology, strong European presence and leading service and custom power solutions across a wide range of applications complements Emerson Network Power’s other leading brands and businesses. The addition of Chloride strengthens Emerson’s ability to enable Business-Critical Continuity and deliver complete IT infrastructure power solutions. Chloride further adds strength to Emerson’s global position with its industrial UPS technology and customer base.
Visit www.emersonnetworkpower.com.
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Printers

HP unveils world’s most collaborative large-format printer solutions
HP unveiled new products and solutions, including the world’s most collaborative printer, that enable technical design teams to easily access, share and print large-format project files online anytime, anywhere. The new suite of products helps design professionals in the architecture, engineering and construction industries collaborate across multiple locations, streamline processes and reduce costs. It includes:

• The HP Designjet T2300 eMultifunction Printer (eMFP) – the industry’s first web-ready large-format printer with scan, print and copy functionality.

• HP ePrint & Share – which allows design professionals to automatically create, print, share and manage project files online using desktop or mobile devices.

• The HP Designjet T7100 Printer – a high-speed monochrome and color printing system with breakthrough total cost of ownership compared to competing technologies.
  Visit www.hp.com.
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Security

Network security market up in Q2,strong gains by Juniper, Cisco
Market research firm Infonetics Research released its second quarter (2Q10) Network Security Appliances and Software market size, market share and forecast report. “As we expected, the network security appliance and software market mostly followed normal seasonal patterns in the second quarter, growing slightly over the first quarter. Cisco emerged from the component supply issues reported last quarter and noted that all security products are now shipping with standard lead times. Juniper and Check Point both saw growth across a wide variety of product types, customer segments and geographies, with no one major contributor to strength in 2Q10. Looking back a year to the pit of the recession, this market is up 21% from 2Q09,” notes Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research. Worldwide network security appliance and software revenue increased 7% worldwide between 1Q10 and 2Q10, totaling $1.4 billion. Infonetics Research projects the network security appliance and software market will grow to nearly $7 billion in 2014. The top three vendors were up in 2Q10, with Juniper leading growth, increasing revenue 11.9% sequentially, followed by Check Point with a 9.0% increase and Cisco with an 8.3% bump
Visit www.infonetics.com.



Security survey businesses want hybrid CPE/SaaS
Market research firm Infonetics Research released Threat Protection and SaaS: North American Enterprise Survey, a market research study of security buying plans of 240 US and Canadian small, medium and large organizations from a wide variety of vertical markets. Respondent businesses of all sizes say that protecting against theft and accidental leakage of data are the two biggest drivers to invest in content security.  The firewall is still the center of the security gateway universe, used by most survey respondent businesses. There is strong demand among businesses for more features in fewer devices. When asked to rate key security vendors, respondents rated larger companies (Cisco, Juniper, Symantec) generally higher than smaller companies; when asked to name the top three hosted/cloud-based providers, respondents named mostly product companies - not a single traditional telecom service provider made it into the top eight.
Visit www.infonetics.com.
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