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 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

2011 USA FALL RECEPTION
September 14, 2011
Boston, MA

2011 EUROPEAN FALL CONFERENCE
October 26 - 28, 2011
Hamburg, Germany

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.

Meet the new members
Book review
Financing
HP
IBM
People
Samsung and IBM
Security

Meet the new members

Outsource International
Outsource International is a global technical services provider, operating locally in 185 countries via a network of 750 service companies. The company is vendor independent and covers all aspects of networking and IT, including WAN, LAN, desktop, voice, cabling, video conferencing, security and full or part time resourcing. A centrally located 24 hour helpdesk in the UK co-ordinates all global activity. Our main support focus includes Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, Bluecoat, Juniper, HP, Dell, IBM and Tandberg to name a few. Outsource International supplies services to carriers, SI’s, resellers and distributors. What makes us unique is our vendor independence on a global basis, and that we never compete with our customers as we are not bidding to the end user market. We provide solutions for single units in hard to reach locations or multi country support via a single point of contact.
Visit www.intoutsource.com.


Hardware.com
Hardware.com is a global leader supplying new, unused and refurbished Cisco equipment. Our other core offerings include a wide array of compatible optics, alternative networking platforms, and independent maintenance and repair services under the Smartpac® brand. Hardware.com, founded in 2005 as a sister company to Zycko LTD, is a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company, the Simian Group. From its inception in 1999, the Simian Group has grown into an international company with over 300 staff in 15 offices across 4 continents, and more than $200 Million in revenue per year.
Visit us.hardware.com.
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Book review

Cisco Networking Simplified (Second Edition)

The world of Cisco networking can seem overwhelming to the uninitiated.  There are literally hundreds of books about Cisco Systems and networking.  The vast majority are narrowly focused on a specific subject and were written for those already in the industry or students guided by an instructor.  It’s rare to find an introductory overview covering the depth and breadth of Cisco in more simple language.  This book does a credible job at making Cisco, and networking, less intimidating. In this completely revised and expanded edition, the authors have added over 100 pages, two sections, and 18 sub-sections (or chapters, if you will).  Additionally, they have rearranged and changed section and sub-section titles essentially making this second edition a wholly new book.

This book is for anyone with an interest in how the internet works in general, and how Cisco Systems supports internetworking applications including data, voice, video, image, etc.  Whether you want to become a networking professional or just want to understand what they’re talking about, this book is a good introduction.  I like this book and recommend it to anyone with more than just a passing interest in Cisco networking.

Reviewed by Jeff Owen, Independent IT Consultant with 20+ years experience in telecommunications/networking and IT.
Contact Jeff at [email protected]

Authors:  Jim Doherty, Neil Anderson, and Paul Della Maggiora
Illustrator:  Nathan Clement
Softcover: 432 pages
Publisher:  Cisco Press (December 2007)
ISBN-10: 1-58720-199-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-58720-199-8
Price:  $44.99; Digital Guru $27.50^Back To Top

Financing

Dell announces competitive financing promotions
Dell Financial Services (DFS), the lending and financing division of Dell, announced aggressive financing offers for U.S. based small, medium and large businesses and public organizations, to help customers preserve capital, maximize IT investments and drive innovation. Responding to customer needs, Dell offers outstanding financing options including zero percent financing to small and medium business customers and deferred payments, rotation leasing and low rate financing for large enterprises and public entities on all EqualLogic and KACE solutions. The full circle lease is providing U.S. small & medium sized businesses with easy-to-understand terms, no hidden fees or surprise final purchase amounts, coupled with competitive pricing and servicing to acquire Dell Laptops and Desktops. Dell Business Credit (revolving credit) offers U.S. small & medium sized businesses with special financing promotions featuring low fixed rates, no minimum purchase size requirements, and no annual fees.
Visit www.dellfinancialservices.com.
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HP

HP accelerates the transformation of healthcare
HP announced a new solution portfolio designed to deliver flexibility and efficiency to health organizations. The new HP Digital Health solutions enable health organizations to accelerate change and innovation, advance operational efficiencies and orchestrate care across the ecosystem. The HP Digital Health solution portfolio includes:
--HP Digital Hospital 2.0 – HP Digital Hospital uses technology convergence to create a highly integrated, pervasive, real-time information environment.
--HP Health Solution Center – Located in Plano, Texas, the center enables rich demonstration and evaluation capabilities critical to advancing the development of open, industry-standard healthcare solutions and technologies.
--HP V-Health (Virtual Health Management) – This new solution set focuses on the outpatient and home environment, delivering tools that enable healthcare organizations to link patient “teams” to monitor health and deliver care to patients wherever it is needed.
HP Digital Hospital 2.0 + V-Health Solutions enable care coordination across the healthcare ecosystem, which includes hospitals, ambulatory clinics, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes and physician offices.
Visit www.hp.com.


HP to acquire Vertica
HP announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vertica, a privately held, real-time analytics platform company based in Billerica, Mass. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition of Vertica will enhance HP capabilities for information optimization, adding sophisticated, real-time business analytics for large and complex sets of data in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Vertica’s platform helps customers analyze massive amounts of data simply, quickly and reliably, resulting in “just-in-time” business intelligence. HP expects the acquisition to close in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2011. After the acquisition closes, Vertica products will be available through HP sales and service channels.
Visit www.hp.com and www.vertica.com.
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IBM

IBM to collaborate with Nuance to apply IBM's 'Watson' analytics technology to healthcare
IBM and Nuance Communications, Inc. announced a research agreement to explore, develop and commercialize the Watson computing system's advanced analytics capabilities in the healthcare industry. The research and technology initiative will combine IBM's Deep Question Answering (QA), Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning capabilities with Nuance's speech recognition and Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of patients that provide hospitals, physicians and payers access to critical and timely information. Watson's ability to analyze the meaning and context of human language, and quickly process information to find precise answers can assist decision makers, such as physicians and nurses, unlock important knowledge and facts buried within huge volumes of information, and offer answers they may not have considered to help validate their own ideas or hypotheses. The two companies expect the first commercial offerings from the collaboration to be available in 18-24 months. Additionally, Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine are contributing their medical expertise and research to the collaborative effort.
Visit  http://www.ibm.com/press/watson and http://www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/index.htm.
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People

Michael Jasper joins IntelliChief, LLC as Partner Development Manager
IntelliChief, LLC, the leading provider of Paperless Process Management (PPM) solutions for the IBM I (System i, iSeries, AS/400) Enterprise, announced the appointment of Michael Jasper to Partner Development Manager. In this role, Jasper will be responsible for building, managing, supporting and ensuring the success of the company's key partner programs. A 10-year industry veteran with extensive executive sales leadership experience, Jasper comes to IntelliChief from San Diego-based TLE.market, Inc., a solutions provider that identifies sales opportunities for enterprise software and B2B service firms. At TLE.market, Inc. since 2004, Jasper held a series of increasingly high-level management roles where he helped independent software vendors greatly increase the size of their sales channel. From 1997 to 2002, Jasper was Product/Channel Development Manager at Pivotpoint West, one of the premiere business solution providers on the West Coast.
Visit www.intellichief.com.
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Samsung and IBM

Samsung Electronics and IBM announce patent cross-license agreement
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. of South Korea and IBM have announced a patent cross-license agreement under which the companies will license their respective patent portfolios to each other. IBM and Samsung topped the list of the world's most inventive companies in 2010 as the first and second recipients of U.S. patents, respectively. IBM has been the leading recipient of U.S. patents for 18 consecutive years. Over the past several decades, IBM and Samsung have built strong patent portfolios covering a wide range of technologies including semiconductors, telecommunications, visual and mobile communications, software and technology-based services. This cross-licensing agreement enables the two companies to innovate and operate freely while using each other's patented inventions to help keep pace with sophisticated technology and business demands. The companies said the cooperation fostered by cross-licensing reinforces their ability to provide better products and services, while maintaining their competitiveness.
Visit www.samsung.com and www.ibm.com.
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Security

Study identifies visual privacy as weak link in data security practices
A recent study conducted by People Security and commissioned by 3M, the maker of privacy filters for computers and mobile devices, reveals two-thirds of employees expose sensitive data outside the workplace – some even exposing highly regulated and confidential information such as customer credit card and social security numbers. The study included a survey of 800 working professionals and an experiment at a large IT conference where attendee computer usage habits and data security choices were observed. The Visual Data Breach Risk Assessment Study also found the majority of companies do not have policies or measures in place to protect sensitive information from computer screen snooping when employees are working in public places.  “Companies know they need to protect confidential information, but the threat of a visual data breach has historically been low on the priority list,” said John Stoxen, 3M Director of Business Conduct and Compliance. “This study should convince companies to reassess their data security policies and tools to determine how to better protect against visual data breaches when employees are working outside the office. At 3M, we address the risk of visual privacy in our Electronic Resources policy by requiring employees to take appropriate measures to protect 3M confidential information in public places by using privacy filters.”
Visit http://www.3MPrivacyFilters.com/whitepapers.
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