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:

2011 USA WINTER RECEPTION
January 13, 2011
Atlanta, GA

2011 ASIA CONFERENCE
February 17 - 18, 2011
Singapore

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

2011 EUROPEAN SPRING RECEPTION
Thursday, 19 May 2011
London, England

2011 USA SUMMER RECEPTION
June 15, 2011
Chicago, IL

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.

Book review
HP
IBM
Nearshoring
Oracle
People
Security
Software
Storage

Book review

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)
Reviewed by Jeff Owen, Independent IT Consultant

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) provides an excellent overview of UCS and Cisco’s view of the next evolutionary step in data centers and virtualization.  Cisco’s UCS is not only a new data center concept; it is also a product line for Cisco.  However, this book is not just about UCS. Therefore the book may be useful in other data center design situations even though its focus is on Cisco’s UCS.  The authors provide sufficient detail for any infrastructure designer or manager to understand and evaluate UCS. 

This book is a useful primer and ongoing reference for anyone serious about implementing the Cisco Unified Computing System solution in their organization. It includes web-site link information where appropriate in the text, a short glossary, and a detailed bibliography that also makes it an excellent reference book for data center planning beyond UCS.  Beyond the reading, the Cisco Unified Computing System Platform Emulator Lite on the included CD makes it easy to create an evaluation environment to determine what UCS can do for your organization.  New uses and applications rely on virtualized data centers.  Whether or not you are a Cisco user, this book can help in your evaluation of, and planning for, upgrading the data center.

Jeff Owen is an independent consultant with 20+ years experience in telecommunications/networking and IT. He can be reached at [email protected].

Authors: Silvano Gal, Tommi Salli, and Roger Andersson
Softcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Cisco Press (July 2010)
ISBN – 10: 1587141930
ISBN – 13: 9781587141935
List Price:  $50.00; Amazon: $40.96
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HP

HP improves performance, reduces costs with support for virtualized server environments
HP announced a comprehensive support solution that enables clients running business-critical applications on virtualized HP ProLiant servers to improve performance and availability while reducing costs and complexity. The new HP Critical Advantage service provides clients with an assigned account team to deliver support and maintain uptime of business-critical, virtualized environments. Account teams focus on problem resolution and process improvement, which enables clients to redirect staff resources toward innovation. HP Critical Advantage is the first comprehensive service offering from a major technology vendor that delivers support for business-critical applications in virtualized x86 environments. As more organizations implement business-critical applications on virtualized x86 servers, the need to avoid unplanned downtime while accelerating performance has increased. HP Critical Advantage services maintain clients’ uptime by offering support levels based on needs and budget. HP Critical Advantage is available now through HP Technology Services.
Visit www.hp.com/services/criticaladvantage.
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IBM

IBM Watson computing system to challenge Jeopardy! champions
IBM and America’s Favorite Quiz show Jeopardy! announced this week that an IBM computing system named “Watson” will compete on Jeopardy! against the show’s two most successful and celebrated contestants--Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air on February 14, 15 and 16, 2011, with two matches being played over three consecutive days. Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge–build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. The Jeopardy! format provides the ultimate challenge because the game’s clues involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles and other complexities in which humans excel and computers traditionally do not. Competing against Watson will be two of the most celebrated players ever to appear on Jeopardy!  Ken Jennings broke the Jeopardy! record for the most consecutive games played by winning 74 games in a row during the 2004-2005 season, resulting in winnings of more than $2.5 million. Brad Rutter won the highest cumulative amount ever by a single Jeopardy! player, earning $3,255,102. The grand prize for this competition will be $1 million with second place earning $300,000 and third place $200,000. Rutter and Jennings will donate 50 percent of their winnings to charity, and IBM will donate 100 percent of its winnings to charity.
Visit www.ibmwatson.com.
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Nearshoring

Communication, efficiency and value key advantages of nearshoring  
CIOs and technology decision-makers operating in today’s economy need to ensure that every investment in new applications results in tangible value for the business. Nearshoring – using an IT partner within the Americas – represents some clear advantages over offshoring, especially when delivered with Agile methodologies and Lean principles, according to a recent research paper by Nearshore Americas and Ci&T, a consulting and technology outsourcing services company. Companies using nearshore partners routinely see better client-provider communication, faster time of delivery and greater value in their application development projects, enabling better quality software in every engagement. Offshore providers trumpet their ability to deliver custom applications at a significant cost-savings to the client. But the reality is that communication issues and geographical distance in these projects may limit the gains of labor arbitrage at the expense of productivity and delivery of true value to the business. For this reason, nearshore IT services providers for application development can be the perfect solution when agility and business contribution are critical: reducing costs by outsourcing while taking advantage of time zone, geographical and cultural similarities.
Visit www.ciandt.com.
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Oracle

Oracle beats IBM with nearly three times better throughput at 26 percent lower price/performance
Oracle announced a world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on a SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers, beating the fastest IBM TPC-C result with DB2 running on IBM's POWER7-based server cluster.  Achieving 30,249,688 transactions per minute (tpmC) with a price/performance of $1.01/tpmC, the winning SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers consisted of 27 SPARC T3-4 servers with flash storage technology using Sun Storage F5100 Flash Arrays. Oracle Real Application Clusters allowed the SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers to scale performance by nearly 3 times compared to the highest level ever recorded with the TPC-C benchmark while ensuring high availability and better response times. Oracle Real Application Clusters is in production use at thousands of customers, enabling transparent scaling of real-world business applications.  Oracle now holds the TPC-C world record in both major categories -- performance and price/performance. 
Visit www.oracle.com.



Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration dramatically reduces time to deploy virtual infrastructure
Extending its commitment to delivering integrated hardware and software systems that are engineered to work together, Oracle announced availability of the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration for Sun Blade 6000 modular systems. The new Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration can help reduce the time to deploy virtual infrastructure by up to 98 percent when compared to multi-vendor configurations. All components listed in the reference configuration have been tested together by Oracle, reducing the need for customer testing and the time-consuming and complex effort of designing and deploying a stable configuration.  Benefitting from pre-installed Oracle VM Server for x86 software on Oracle's highly scalable and reliable Sun Blade servers with built-in networking and Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line, the configuration provides high availability via the blade cluster as well as a documented best practice guide that helps reduce deployment time and cost for customers implementing highly virtualized applications or private cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) architectures.
Visit www.oracle.com.
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People

Marcela Perez de Alonso to retire from HP
HP announced Marcela Perez de Alonso will retire as executive vice president of Human Resources for personal reasons after deciding to relocate to be with her family.  Perez de Alonso has served as executive vice president and a member of the company’s Executive Council since 2004. Among her many accomplishments, Perez de Alonso has led HP’s human resources organization through a series of acquisitions and a period of unprecedented growth, with HP’s workforce roughly doubling over the last six years. She implemented numerous people programs, including “Leading for Results” to help cultivate the next generation of HP leadership and “Winning with Wellness” to empower employees to take charge of their health, finances and stress management. She was named “2009 Human Capital Leader of the Year” by the Society of Human Resource Management and featured on the cover of HR Executive magazine for architecting a breakthrough workforce planning model unmatched in the HR industry.
Visit www.hp.com.
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Security

Westcon Group expands global distribution strategy with ArcSight
Westcon Group, Inc. announced new North American and expanded European distribution agreements with ArcSight, an HP company and a leading global provider of cybersecurity and compliance solutions. The announcement marks the first North American agreement between the two companies, powering Westcon reseller partners with the ArcSight Enterprise Threat and Risk Management (ETRM) platform. Leveraging its industry-leading global reseller footprint, Westcon Group will distribute ArcSight solutions to 10 major markets across the globe. The ArcSight ETRM platform is a highly integrated product suite for collecting, analyzing and assessing security and risk information. The solution enables companies to easily safeguard their business by delivering complete visibility into all activity across the IT infrastructure, including: external threats such as malware and hackers; internal threats such as data breaches and fraud; risks from application flaws and configuration changes; and compliance pressures from failed audits.
Visit www.arcsight.com and www.westcongroup.com.
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Software

Oracle secures number one spot in IDC’s Top 10 Life Science Software Vendor list
IDC Health Insights announced the availability of the annual Vendor Assessment: Top 10 Life Science Software Vendors report, which identifies the top 10 software vendors serving the life science market. Oracle easily topped the chart for a second consecutive year, extending its life science software license revenue lead over all other vendors to $161 million. The new report includes both enterprise and specialty vendors. While Oracle maintained the number 1 position, SAP continued its stronghold on the number 2 spot, with a 5.6% market share and $170 million in life science software license revenue, and Accelrys moved into third place, holding a 5% market share and $150 million in life science software license revenue. SAS and Medidata round out the top 5 vendors. Cegedim and PTC held firm in maintaining their inclusion in the top 10 list and were joined by three new vendors, including research-focused companies Thermo Fisher Scientific and Perceptive Informatics as well as contract and revenue management vendor iMANY.
Visit www.idc-hi.com.
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Storage

Dell positioned in "Leaders" quadrant in 2010 report on midrange and high-end modular disk arrays
Dell announced that Gartner Inc. positioned the company in the “Leaders” quadrant of its 2010 Magic Quadrant for Midrange and High-End Modular Disk Arrays report. According to the Gartner report, “Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the highest scores for their ability to execute and completeness of vision. A midrange disk array storage vendor in the Leaders quadrant has the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. They demonstrate a clear understanding of market needs; they are innovators and thought leaders; and they have well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use when designing their storage infrastructures and strategies. In addition, they have a presence in the five major geographical regions, consistent financial performance and broad platform support.” Dell’s storage arrays include both EqualLogic and Dell/EMC solutions.
Visit www.dell.com/storage.
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