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 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.

Acquisitions
Cisco
Dell
HP
IBM
Leasing
Market
Security
Testing

Acquisitions

Lenovo to swallow German PC giant
Chinese PC maker Lenovo has agreed to acquire German consumer electronics and PC manufacturer Medion in a move that it says will double its market share in Germany, making it the third-largest PC company in that country. The €629.4m ($920m) deal will be Lenovo's largest since its $1.75bn acquisition of IBM's PC business in 2005 – although that deal would now be worth over $2bn in 2001 dollars, making the Medion buy less than half the size of that 2005 blockbuster. According to Lenovo, the deal will result in the combined company controlling over 14 per cent of the German PC market, and having a Western European PC market share of about 7.4 per cent. In "the near term", Lenovo reports, both companies will maintain their individual product brands, sales and support channels, customer service, product delivery and warranty services. It will be "business as usual" after the acquisition, they claim. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. Lenovo recently announced 2010-2011 revenues of over $21bn. During that period, they report, the company grew 28.2 per cent while the worldwide PC market grew 7.4 per cent.
Visit www.lenovo.com.
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Cisco

ANDTEK delivers attendant functions for visually impaired
ANDTEK GmbH will be presenting Unified Communications solutions at the “CiscoLive 2011″ in Las Vegas (July 10-14). The center stage of the product range is the attendant console software “AND Desktop AC”.  This solution offers a standardized environment with an identical interface on various platforms and is the ideal solution for enterprise customers and call centers handling their calls by phone and/or via PC. The solution offers a quick installation and integration into existing environments. Since the latest release the attendant console solution is also available in a version including Braille display to be used as a full-featured workplace for the visually impaired. Further highlights presented by ANDTEK are easy to handle manager/assistant services, a provisioning solution boosting the efficiency of moves/add/changes and a virtual infrastructure for all offerings.
Visit www.andtek.com.


Global Internet traffic projected to quadruple by 2015
Cisco predicts that the number of network-connected devices will be more than 15 billion, twice the world's population, by 2015. In the fifth annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2010-2015), the company also said the total amount of global Internet traffic will quadruple by 2015 and reach 966 exabytes per year. The projected increase of Internet traffic between 2014 and 2015 alone is 200 exabytes, which is greater than the total amount of Internet Protocol traffic generated globally in 2010. On the verge of reaching 1 zettabyte, which is equal to a sextillion bytes, or a trillion gigabytes by 2015, global IP traffic growth is driven by four primary factors, according to Cisco. They are: an increasing number of devices; more Internet users; faster broadband speed; and more video. By 2015, 1 million video minutes --the equivalent of 674 days --will traverse the Internet every second. The annual Cisco VNI Forecast was developed to estimate global Internet Protocol traffic growth and trends. Widely used by service providers, regulators, and industry influencers alike, the Cisco VNI Forecast is based on in-depth analysis and modeling of traffic, usage and device data from independent analyst forecasts.
Visit http://www.ciscovni.com/vni_forecast/index.htm.
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Dell

Dell Services selected by Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has selected Dell’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Perot Systems Government Services (PSGS), a unit of Dell Services, to provide a full scope of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) support services as well as hardware, enterprise and software products. The program will aid the commission in planning, directing and overseeing the delivery of centralized and efficient information technology infrastructure and information management services. Under the 6-year, $252 million contract, Dell Services will operate, maintain and enhance a comprehensive, agency-wide IT infrastructure for the NRC’s Office of Information Systems. The core areas that Dell Services will provide support include: program management, Blackberry Support Services, Email and Messaging, File and Print, Personal Computing, Software License Management, Network Management, Remote Access, Integration and High Performance Computing. Additional services within the contract include: Computer Facilities Management, Data Center Systems Administration, management of the Nuclear Security Incident Response Operations Center, Wireless Communication, Information Assurance and Security, Technology Assessment and management of the Emergency Response Data System.
Visit www.dell.com.
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HP

Clarus Systems receives HP 2011 AllianceONE award
Clarus Systems, Inc. announced it has received an HP 2011 AllianceONE Partner of the Year Award at HP DISCOVER in Las Vegas.  HP AllianceONE Partner of the Year Awards are presented to an exclusive set of HP alliance partners in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments in the development and delivery of innovative solutions that achieve standard-setting levels for business excellence and client satisfaction. Clarus received the award in the category for Technology Partner – Enterprise Management Alliance Program (EMAP) Gold, in recognition of how its flagship ClarusIPC Plus+ software integrates with HP Network Node Manager i software to manage complex voice, video and data networks for enterprise customers.  ClarusIPC Plus+ provides automated testing, remote troubleshooting and configuration management capabilities for voice, video and unified communication during new deployments, upgrades and ongoing operations.
Visit www.clarussystems.com and www.hp.com.
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IBM

DRV Technologies adds PDF417 barcode to forms software
DRV Technologies, Inc., the developer of FormFlex electronic form and MICR laser check software for the IBM Power Systems (IBM i, System i, iSeries, AS/400), announces the addition of several new barcode types including PDF417 to the list of supported barcodes in the FormFlex software. These barcodes will allow companies to meet the demands of vendors as well as requirements from federal agencies such as Homeland Security.  FormFlex is an IBM Power System host based application that allows organizations to reduce costs by replacing expensive pre-printed forms and checks with electronic forms and checks that can print the form and data in a single pass with logos and barcodes to inexpensive network laser printers. PDF417 is the standard selected by the Department of Homeland Security as the machine readable zone technology for RealID compliant driver licenses and state issued identification cards. In addition PDF-417 is required when printing some labels such as FedEx shipping labels. PDF417 is also selected by the airline industry's Bar Coded Boarding Pass standard (BCBP) as the 2D bar code symbolism for paper boarding passes.
Visit www.drvtech.com.
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Leasing

Former Cisco and TD Equipment Finance execs join Securus Capital
Mike Mankin, formerly federal leasing manager of Cisco Capital, and Mike McKinney, formerly with TD Equipment Finance and Key Government Finance, have joined Securus Capital as senior vice presidents. Securus Capital, headquartered in metro Washington, DC, is a provider of federal leasing solutions to government agencies. Mankin helped grow annual federal finance volume from $5 million when he joined Cisco in 2000 to $350 million in 2010, totaling over $1.6 billion during his tenure. McKinney has over 25 years of experience in federal technology finance and has consistently and dramatically increased financing volume across a variety of asset classes, including information technology, telecommunications and energy conservation. Maeve Rigler, president of Securus, said, “Mike McKinney and Mike Mankin are widely regarded as the sales leaders in federal technology finance. With their energy, skills and depth of knowledge, they have helped agencies acquire well over $2 billion of mission-critical assets. We are excited to have the most talented and experienced professionals in the market join our team.”
Visit www.securuscapital.com.
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Market

Sinking Sun scuppers Oracle server figures
Oracle's standing in the EMEA server space took another battering during Q1 as sales collapsed in a market that posted double-digit growth, underpinned by high-end and mid-range shipments supporting virtualization and cloud deployments. The US behemoth saw revenues plummet by almost 20 per cent to $241m, pushing down its market share from 9.5 per cent a year ago to 6.9 per cent, while the total market climbed 10.8 per cent to $3,5bn. Nathaniel Martinez, IDC research director in the Enterprise Server Group, said Oracle accounted for more than 70 per cent of overall RISC Unix sales but bore the brunt of the weakened segment. "The whole RISC and UNIX market remains in the doldrums with customers continuing to adopt a wait and see attitude [as they assess recent tech advances on x86, at chip and systems level, designed to boost reliability, availability and security]," he said. Martinez said server sales were being driven by the ongoing transformation of the data center as medium and large organizations look to gain efficiencies through virtualization, automation and cloud strategies. Market giants HP, IBM and Dell were on their uppers in the quarter, bagging total market growth of 10 per cent, 33 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
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Security

Gartner positions Actiance as a visionary
Actiance announced it has been included in the Gartner, Inc. 2011 Secure Web Gateway Magic Quadrant in the Visionaries quadrant of the report. Gartner reviewed 19 vendors and solutions in the report, selecting Actiance for inclusion based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision. As stated in the Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateway" (L. Orans/P. Firstbrook, May 25, 2011), "We ranked vendors on the strength of their commitment to the SWG market in the form of strong product management, their vision for the SWG market and the degree to which their road maps reflect a solid commitment of resources to achieve that vision." Actiance is the leader in delivering Internet application security and management solutions, and provides the broadest visibility and controls for more than 5,000 named Internet applications. The company's customers include 20 of the largest 50 banks in North America and 1,600 customers worldwide.
Visit www.actiance.com and www.gartner.com.
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Testing

Arbour Group expands testing services
Arbour Group announced the expansion of its testing capabilities. The new Enterprise Software Testing offering brings together the expertise, resources and tools required for comprehensive and cost effective testing in regulatory and non-regulatory environments. The expanded Enterprise Software Testing offering includes the multiple layers of a testing hierarchy, e.g., data centers, software infrastructure and enterprise software applications. Risk-based software testing standards are used that follow ISO/ IED 29119 & GAMP 5 for testing of various categories: regression, functional, security & performance, system integration, user acceptance and validation. Automated test tools such as HPQC Suite, QMetry and Bugzilla can also be accommodated in the testing process. Single project, multiple projects or outsourced testing scenarios are competitively coordinated via a transitional onsite, onshore and offshore delivery staffing model with operating test centers in the U.S., Manila, Philippines, and Dubai, U.A.E.
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