By Michael Ansaldo
PC World (US)
August 31, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - The bidding war for 3Par ramped up this week when HP raised its offer to $30 per share, a $3 increase over Dell’s bid, bringing the bidding to $2 billion. Dell had launched the opening salvo in mid-August when it had offered just over $1 billion to buy 3Par. As of this writing, 3Par had deemed HP’s bid “superior” and Dell was mulling over its response.

The unlikely battle of these PC behemoths over a small Fremont, CA data-storage company emphasizes the storage market’s continuing shift toward enterprise cloud computing. Thanks to the recession, more corporate clients are embracing the kind of affordable virtualized storage that companies like 3Par provide.

The fight for 3Par is undoubtedly fueled by the fact that Both Dell and HP have seen their “beige box” business falter as personal computing evolves toward handheld devices. At the same time, however, both companies have lead the growth in the server market. As that business migrates toward the promise of cloud computing, it’s not hard to see why the two companies are vying for a seat at the table.

Cloud computing offers several indisputable advantages for small businesses. It reduces upfront costs, as the initial infrastructure is paid for by the cloud storage provider - no small break for small business owners, who constantly struggle to keep costs down. As it negates the need for vast on-site data centers, it also reduces the need to employ a large in-house IT staff. And because multiple customers share resources in the cloud model, it further lowers ongoing costs.

Whichever company ultimately comes out on top in the bidding war will undoubtedly incorporate 3Par’s virtual storage solutions into its already robust storage portfolio. The acquisition will position either HP or Dell as a one-stop storage solution with greater production and cost efficiencies, which should make it pretty attractive for cash-strapped customers looking to pare down the number of physical servers and decentralize their data in the cloud.

It’s still not clear which PC giant will end up owning 3Par. Dell has three business days beginning Monday to announce whether it will counter HP’s $2 billion bid or concede. Regardless of which company triumphs, ultimately, small businesses may come out the winner.

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By Tony Bradley
PC World (US)
August 27, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell has reportedly emerged victorious in the battle with HP for virtualized storage provider 3PAR. After raising its bid to trump HP, Dell announced that 3PAR has accepted its offer. So, what does 3PAR bring to the table, and why was it such a hot commodity for the two tech giants to fight over?
There are two key strategic values to acquiring 3PAR. Virtualized storage enables Dell to expand its services offering and provide a source of revenue beyond server and desktop hardware sales. It also gives Dell a boost in the competitive cloud market.

Greg Richardson, an analyst with Technology Business Research, had this to say about Dell’s aggressive pursuit of 3PAR. “Dell is buying its way into the solutions game,” adding that Dell’s “acquisition of enterprise storage vendor 3PAR marks the next rung in its ladder to becoming an enterprise solutions vendor.”
Dell has been on a buying spree–mimicking its rival HP. In the past couple years, Dell has acquired Perot Systems, EqualLogic, and now 3PAR. The moves let Dell expand its portfolio beyond high-volume PC and server manufacturing to provide services, and other solutions for customers.

Richardson explains “The reshaping better positions Dell against competitors IBM and HP, who can address large-scale build-outs of integrated hardware and software with their services and software portfolios. By offering hardware and software that enabled the development of virtualized environments, as well as design, implementation, and support services, Dell further positions itself as a solutions provider.”

While Dell claims that 3PAR has accepted its revised offer, 3PAR also accepted Dell’s initial offer–before HP came along and stirred things up. Tom Buiocchi, CEO of Data Robotics, points out “some very smart people have said in the past ‘it ain’t over till it’s over’, and we’ve all seen unpredictable things happen in this industry.” HP could still counter.

Amish Jani, managing director of FirstMark Capital, provides some additional insight into why Dell and HP are so anxious to get 3PAR. “3Par is the only high end virtualized storage provider that is independent. Put through either one of their channels, they could double, triple or even quadruple sales. That’s why these companies can afford the premium.”

Jani further clarifies the desire for 3PAR in a blog post “If you believe you need to own storage and server, both to fulfill the vision above and to avoid partnering with a competitor, then 3Par is the only place to get this type of deep high end storage technology.”

Data Robotics’ Buiocchi believes that 3PAR is a great addition for either Dell or HP. “There is a continued, huge challenge of managing large amounts of data and huge data growth within large enterprises, and 3PAR has the goods here.

Dell must feel 3PAR is critical to its growth in order to warrant a 50 percent increase in its bid–a value of about half a billion dollars. Buiocchi may have hit the nail on the head in describing the real value of 3PAR, though. “When one of them gets 3PAR, the other doesn’t - and that could provide a competitive advantage in a big market.”

Based on current reports, though, it appears that Dell has emerged victorious in this battle.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
August 25, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Hewlett-Packard’s $1.6 billion offer today to purchase grid-storage vendor 3Par came as a surprise to many tech industry watchers, but it’s a smart move, both offensively and defensively.

HP does not have its own enterprise-class storage array; instead — like Oracle/Sun — it resells Hitachi Data Systems’ Universal Storage Platform (USP). And it sees Dell — which offered $1.15 billion for 3Par a week ago — as a threat in the enterprise data center marketplace. 3Par’s cloud-based storage architecture would give it a significant leg up into that space.

HP’s chief strategy and technology officer, Shane Robison, argued that HP would be a better fit for Fremont, Calif.-based 3Par than Dell, since both HP and 3Par are Silicon Valley companies.

HP had been eying 3Par for some time and had made an earlier offer for the grid-storage vendor, HP executives said, though they did not provide further details.

3Par declined comment on HP’s bid. So did a Dell spokesman.

“Clearly, when you go in with a bid that’s a 33.3% premium [over a rival's bid] it’s a competitive bid and not based on what the company is worth,” said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass. “So it’s going to end up with who blinks first. Which company wants to lose this bidding war less?”

3Par’s technologies will help HP expand its offerings for building public and private cloud services, according to Dave Donatelli, HP’s executive vice president and general manager of enterprise servers, storage and networking.

In addition, HP has “a unique ability” to bring 3Par’s products to market. “Our reach is something other [companies] simply can’t match,” he said during a morning conference call.

A gut punch to EMC

Donatelli once ran EMC’s Storage Division. He left EMC and moved to HP in April 2009.

In more ways than one, HP’s move reflects a worst-case scenario for EMC, which last year was able to obtain a court order blocking Donatelli from openly working in HP’s storage division for one year under the terms of a noncompete agreement he signed with EMC. Now, however, Donatelli and HP have an opportunity to make a land-grab for technology that competes directly against EMC’s high-end Symmetrix array.

“No question in my mind that Donatelli is a technology-hungry guy. Probably from the day he walked into HP, he made it known he was not crazy about reselling arrays from HDS,” said Arun Taneja, lead consultant at Taneja Group in Hopkinton, Mass.

The HP-Dell bidding war is reminiscent of EMC’s 2009 battle with rival NetApp for leading data de-duplication vendor Data Domain. NetApp bid first, but EMC eventually won the war in July 2009 by offering $2.1 billion in cash for a company that generated $274 million in revenue in 2008.

While Data Domain’s board of directors urged the company to reject EMC’s bid, ultimately they accepted the bigger offer.

3Par reported $194.3 million in revenue for the fiscal year that ended March 31. So HP’s bid already represents a valuation that’s more than eight times the revenue 3Par generates. Even so, analysts don’t think the bidding war will end quickly; they expect a counter offer by Dell.

Both HP and Dell have deep pockets. Dell reported earnings of $52 billion in its last fiscal year. HP earned $114 billion.

“It would be very odd for someone to back down soon,” Peters said.

What’s in it for Dell?

Dell has been acquiring companies in the storage arena for the past two years. It bought out iSCSI storage company EqualLogic in 2008, network-attached storage provider Exanet in February and data compression vendor Ocarina Networks last month as part of a strategy to gather best-in-class storage products.

3Par sells storage arrays that can be clustered together to provide petabytes of capacity that can be served up to business units like a utility. The technology is especially well suited for supporting virtualized server setups and private and public cloud computing infrastructures because it can be centrally managed and scales, like building blocks, in capacity and performance.

So if Dell purchases 3Par, it gets a strong foundation on which it can build a cloud computing offering.

“Dell’s bid was always and still remains about more than just storage,” Peters said. “Dell wants to be more of an enterprise player in the data center, and this is part of a jigsaw piece in that puzzle.”

Taneja said that while HP may appear to be the better suitor for 3Par because of its longer history with storage in the enterprise data center, Dell has proven it knows how to handle storage acquisitions. For example, since Dell’s acquisition of EqualLogic, the iSCSI storage company has seen a 63% year-over-year increase in revenue, according to Taneja.

“At the time Dell was purchasing EqualLogic, everyone was saying, ‘What does Dell think it’s doing?’ All of EqualLogic’s resellers will disappear,” Taneja said. “Man, how wrong was that?”

What about EMC, IBM - even Oracle?

Industry analysts agreed that other data center and storage players, such as IBM, EMC and even Oracle, won’t likely enter the fray between Dell and HP. For one, IBM and EMC already have their own enterprise-class storage arrays, so purchasing another array company would practically be an admission that their existing technology is lacking.

Oracle is still busy digesting its purchase of Sun Microsystems, which currently resells HDS’ high-end arrays and offers entry-level systems from LSI Logic midrange systems of its own. So it’s also not a likely suitor, both Taneja and Peters said.

“Oracle would be a horrible place for 3Par,” Taneja said. “Look at what they’re doing with Sun. They’re quashing all the openness. Customers were already leaving Sun. In the hands of Oracle, that has accelerated.”

Peters agreed: “I think the others will stand on the side and say, ‘Let them fight it out.’”

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By Mike Bucken
Computerworld (US)
August 24, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Hewlett-Packard this morning said it has submited a $1.6 billion bid to buy 3Par, just a week after Dell had agreed to buy the virtualized storage maker for $1.15 billion.

HP said that if the proposal, 33.3% higher than Dell’s bid, is approved by the 3Par boad, the deal should close by year’s end.

The deal is not subject to any financing contingency, HP added.

HP officials said if the deal closes, the 3Par storage technology will be used as part of its Converged Infrastructure strategy, which includes storage, server and networking products.

“HP’s proposal offers superior value to 3PAR’s shareholders. Our global reach, strong routes to market and commitment to innovation uniquely position HP as the ideal fit for 3PAR,” said Dave Donatelli, HP executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, in a statement.

“We’ve seen great momentum with our Converged Infrastructure strategy, and 3PAR accelerates that strategy, particularly in cloud and scale-out markets,” he added.

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By Jared Newman
PC World (US)
August 17, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” is gradually taking on a new meaning, as Dell pushes into mobile with the Streak tablet and a bunch of new smartphones.

The Dell Streak launches Friday, priced at $550 without a contract and $300 with a voice and data plan from AT&T. Depending on whether you opt for voice coverage, the 5-inch device is either a massive smartphone or a tiny tablet.

Either way, this is new territory for Dell, the third-largest PC maker in the world. Dell has never launched a smartphone or tablet in the United States before, but over the next several months, we’re going to see a lot more as the company tries to reinvent itself.

The first proper smartphone from Dell will be the Aero, an Android smartphone that is coming to AT&T soon. With a 624 MHz processor and only 2GB of memory to start, it’s clearly a low-end smartphone, not the next Droid rival.

Later this year, we may see the Dell Thunder, an Android phone with a 4.1-inch OLED display, an 8-megapixel camera and 720p video capture. A prototype video posted to Engadget shows a monolithic device that combines sharp horizontal edges with rounded grips, but Dell has not officially confirmed its existence. If the Thunder is real, it represents Dell’s best shot at a genuine Android superphone.

Dell will also reportedly hedge its Android bets later this year with the Dell Lightning, a Windows Phone 7 handset. Lightning is rumored to have a 4.1-inch OLED screen and a similar design to the Thunder, but with a physical keyboard that slides out vertically.

So far, Dell’s approach looks unbalanced. The Aero, even if it finds a demographic, is certainly not going to make a splash when it launches, and the Streak is provoking mixed reactions as pundits debate where the 5-inch device fits in. Dell’s smartphones look promising by today’s standards, but at the rate of improvement we’re seeing from competitors like HTC and Motorola, there may be little to distinguish Lighting and Thunder when they arrive towards the end of this year.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
June 11, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Cisco Systems today announced the launch of Cisco Smart Storage , its first line of networked-attached desktop storage devices aimed at businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

Ray Boggs, an analyst with market research firm IDC, said Cisco’s entry into the storage device market is part of a larger industry trend of networking or data center companies attempting to be all things to their customers.

Cisco’s NSS 300 Series of networked storage devices

“Netgear has gone down that road already, as has HP , where you have a network communications company getting involved in storage,” he said. “It speaks to the blurring of a lot of this technology where storage is associated with security, which is associated with the Internet, which then gets you into networking.”

Boggs said Cisco may see larger storage systems as “an interesting prospect,” but he doubted the company would make a move into the SMB or enterprise business space, as that market would bring it into direct competition with business partners and industry stalwarts such as EMC , NetApp, Hewlett-Packard and Dell .

Cisco’s new Small Business NSS 300 Series Smart Storage series consist of two-bay, four-bay and six-bay desktop network storage boxes with up to 12TB of capacity based on 2TB SATA drives.

The arrays, which can be configured as network-attached storage (NAS) or as iSCSI target devices, have retail prices ranging from $913 to $5,625 depending on the capacity and functionality. Cisco also announced an accompanying service plan, the Cisco Small Business Pro Service , which sells for $149 for most NSS 300 Series configurations. The service comes with three years of technical support that includes software updates, 24-hour online chat support, next business-day hardware replacement as necessary, and call support during local business hours.

“The addition of these new devices further emphasizes Cisco’s commitment to providing small businesses with affordable, easy-to-use technology they require to optimize productivity and drive growth,” Ian Pennell, co-chairman of Cisco’s Small Business Council, said in a statement.

The NSS 300 Series Smart Storage supports file sharing and backup for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms and can be set up in a variety of RAID configurations including RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6 (dual-disk drive failure resiliency). Drives in the storage arrays are also hot-swappable, meaning they can be changed out without disruption.

The hard drives for the NSS 300 Series also come with native encryption capability, and data on the drives can be accessed by a secure remote Web interface. The NSS 300 devices can also be set up by policy to shutdown based on scheduled working hours to save on power. Individual hard disk drives can also be set to spin down during periods of inactivity, Cisco said.

The NSS 300 Series devices include several business applications including a user-configurable Web server with an integrated WordPress publishing platform and built-in servers to simplify user authentication and management of the network.

Cisco claims that its new Smart Storage devices can be set up in minutes and are easy to configure and manage with a straightforward browser -based interface.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
May 31, 2010

IT solutions and equipment vendor Dell posted modest growths for the first quarter of 2010, garnering 25% gains in its large enterprise business to reach US$4.2 billion in revenues, a ranking official said recently.

Asia continues to stand out in Dell’s overall performance, delivering stellar growth of over 33% to deliver $2.7 billion in revenue year-on-year to the tech firm, announced Steve Felice, president, global CSMB (Consumer and SMB) business, Dell.

“Asia gave a well-balanced performance for Dell, posting healthy revenue growth in every country except Japan, where revenues were a plateau,” he explained.

Much of the growth came from the company’s server line, where Dell had a 39% increase in revenue, as well as in storage products, which grew more than 75%. The addition of Perot Systems to the company’s portfolio boosted their services revenue to deliver 53% gains globally.

While Felice had no specific numbers for the Philippines, the Dell executive remarked that the country posted a “very healthy growth” in the first quarter, with a high future growth potential in the succeeding quarters.

Felice likewise said that they have established a larger branch office in the country, with a possible move for a full subsidiary soon. “We see enough growth to warrant a structure,” he explained, “but I have no update on the legal entity status just yet, so I can’t comment on the timeframe.”

Dell currently has a stable base of operations for contact centers in the Philippines. Dell’s Asia Pacific office is headquartered in Singapore, while it maintains a manufacturing plant in Penang, Malaysia.

Just recently, its former country manager, Barry Bunyi, resigned from his post for undisclosed reasons. Dell has yet to officially announce Bunyi’s replacement as of writing.

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By Marc Ferranti
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
May 21, 2010

NEW YORK - Though economic concerns continue to roil the markets, major technology vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell are reporting strong quarterly sales gains while market researchers forecast a strong year for IT overall.

Gartner, for example, Tuesday forecast global enterprise IT spending across all industry markets to exceed US$2.4 trillion in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase from 2009. Last year, IT spending across all markets declined 5.6 percent from 2008.

“2010 will see IT spending in all major industries returning to growth,” said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner, in a report. Government spending was singled out as one of the key contributors to this year’s growth.

In a separate report, Gartner said that worldwide mobile-phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 percent increase from the same period in 2009. Smartphone sales jumped by 48.7 percent to 54.3 million units.

“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, in the report.

Meanwhile, IDC stoked hopes for the media tablet market, forecasting shipments of the devices to grow from 7.6 million units in 2010 to more than 46 million units in 2014 — a compound annual growth rate of 57.4 percent. The launch of Apple’s iPad has fueled intense interest in tablets, but there are other factors in play as well, IDC said.

“IDC expects consumer demand for media tablets to be strongly driven by the number and variety of compatible third-party apps for content and services,” noted Susan Kevorkian, a program director for the company, in the company’s tablet report.

IT sales have for the most part confirmed that there is cause for optimism this year. On Thursday, Dell said that revenue for the quarter ending April 30 was $14.9 billion, up 21 percent from the year-earlier period, while earnings rose 52 percent to $441 million.

“This quarter was highlighted by good execution in an improving economic environment,” said Brian Gladden, chief financial officer, in Dell’s financial statement. “We feel good about the growth across our commercial business as it approaches nearly $50 billion in revenues. We will continue to make investments in our enterprise solutions throughout the year.”

HP, the biggest IT vendor in the world, said Tuesday that revenue for the quarter ended April 30 rose 13 percent from the year-earlier period to $30.8 billion. Sales figures are often considered more important than profit numbers as a measure of recovery. While profit can be affected by factors such as layoffs, acquisitions and tax issues, sales are a more direct measure of end-user demand.

Nevertheless, HP’s net earnings exceeded expectations, increasing 28 percent from a year earlier to $2.2 billion.

Despite all the good news from tech, vendor shares have been hit by a lack of confidence in the economy. The tech-oriented Nasdaq declined by 94 points Thursday to close at 2204, well off of its 52-week high of 2535, set April 26.

There appeared to be no single reason for the latest round of market jitters. In the past few weeks, however, investors have shown signs that they are worried that economic problems, including Europe’s debt crisis, might affect the pace of global recovery. In the U.S., the recovery in the job market has not been as rapid as had been hoped for. Weekly job figures have not yet hit a level that is generally considered to indicate a stable, sustainable recovery. Even HP, the IT star of the week, closed Thursday at $45.95, down by $1.05.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
May 18, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell will release its Streak handheld computer in Europe next month and in the U.S. during the summer, CEO Michael Dell said on Thursday.

The Streak is an Android-based device that Dell showed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Not to be confused with Dell’s Mini 3 smartphone that is on sale in a few emerging markets, the Streak has a larger, 5-inch touch screen and looks like an iPhone but bigger.

It has two cameras: a webcam in the front that could potentially be used for videoconferencing, and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. It will operate over both Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Dell has also referred to it in the past as the Mini-5.

The company hopes to attract consumers who want a screen bigger than most smartphones but smaller than a netbook. “There’s several places where a smartphone isn’t enough,” Neeraj Choubey, Dell’s general manager for tablet devices, said recently on the Direct2Dell Web site. “I think many users will see it as a useful media consumption device.” He also said it will run Flash, something Apple devices don’t do.

The Streak has been referred to as a tablet computer, but it’s smaller than what most people would consider a tablet. However, Dell is also reportedly working on larger, 7- and 10-inch versions of the Streak.

The 5-inch model will launch in Europe next month with mobile operator Telefonica O2, and in the U.S. “next summer” with AT&T, Michael Dell said, although it seems likely he meant summer this year. A Dell spokesman couldn’t confirm either way. The operator partnerships had been disclosed but not the timing for release.

Michael Dell showed the device during a speech at virtualization vendor Citrix Systems’ Synergy conference in San Francisco Thursday morning. It was a brief show-and-tell and he didn’t give any details.

He showed the Streak running Citrix Receiver, a virtualization client that allows devices to run Windows desktop applications from a central server. It fit with the theme of the conference but doesn’t mean Receiver will come standard with the Streak.

“It also has all my Android apps, I’ve got Twitter and Facebook on here if you’re into that sort of thing,” Dell said. He didn’t give any pricing.

The Streak is part of a wider effort by Dell to diversify into non-PC devices. The company has also announced an Aero smartphone that will be available soon on AT&T’s 3G network, also running Google’s Android software.

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By Jim Duffy
Network World (US)
April 6, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Cisco this week rolled out a bevy of data center products ranging from servers to switches to SANs, all designed to further broaden the company’s reach beyond networking and into IT infrastructure.

Slideshow: Cisco’s data center deluge
A test of Cisco’s Nexus 5000 data center switch

Cisco’s new offerings include blade and rack servers incorporating Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor, and supporting the company’s FEXlink switching fabric extension architecture. Cisco also unveiled two new Nexus fabric extenders supporting speeds above and below Gigabit Ethernet; an 8Gbps fixed configuration MDS FibreChannel SAN switch; and an appliance for provisioning services to virtual machines.

The sum of the parts indicates Cisco’s intention to play in virtually every facet of data center IT – not just the network and not just virtualization, analysts say.

“The targeting is the big news,” says Jonathan Eunice of Illuminata. “Cisco got into the server business with very narrow targeting: [CEO John] Chambers said, we’re not really after the server business, we’re after the virtualization business. This announcement changes that. [Cisco is] going after any workload, virtual or non-virtual. The specificity is gone.”

This means Cisco will compete more directly with data center server incumbents IBM, HP and Dell. But the company is still looking to differentiate itself by targeting “high-value” sales of server complexes instead of single, standalone servers, Eunice says; and Cisco is still stressing overall data center consolidation, virtualization and automation.

“Even though they’re relaxing their targeting, they’re still very much going for the high-value workload and they’re going for the infrastructure-by-the-ton (sale),” Eunice says. “They don’t want to sell you one; they want to sell in volume for a very standardized kind of infrastructure.”

In that vein, Cisco rolled out two new UCS blade and rack servers:  the B440 M1 and the C460 M1. Both are based on Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor and both – like the other switching and storage access components of UCS now do – support Cisco’s FEXlink architecture for increased performance, bandwidth and access to other resources in the data center.

FEXlink extends the switching fabric of a data center – the mesh of bandwidth configured from multiple core, end of row and top of rack switches — closer to the servers and server racks themselves. This results in a 4x increase in server bandwidth, or 160Gbps per blade, Cisco says. It also allows the blades to harness 8Gbps uplinks to FibreChannel switches, increasing bandwidth to storage resources by 50%, and support more virtual interfaces per NIC, the company says.

This, combined with the new processors, allow the B440 M1 and C460 M1 to support a fourfold increase in compute capacity, making UCS a more general purpose data center physical workload workhorse – not just one optimized for virtual workloads, analysts say.

The B440 M1 and C460 M1 will be available this summer. Cisco claims to have at least 400 customers to date for the platform, and expects $1 billion in revenue this year. But analysts note that demand seems to be lukewarm and that deployments are still mostly trial – not production.

“I think it’s still in the kicking the tires phase,” Eunice says. “Cisco is not a traditional vendor in the server space. This is really not even through the first full year of shipment. They have not disclosed a long list of massive sale, whereas you go to HP or IBM they have tons of references for any size sale.”

To extend the market appeal of FEXlink, meanwhile, Cisco introduced two new Nexus 2000 fabric extenders scaling above and below the 2148T Gigabit Ethernet version unveiled in January, 2009. The Nexus 2232 supports 32 10Gbps Ethernet ports and can extend the FibreChannel over Ethernet capabilities of the Nexus 5000 switch down to the server rack; the 2248 is a 48-port 10/100Mbps Ethernet configuration of the line. Cisco also unveiled a fabric extender transceiver module intended to lower the per port price points of the fabric extenders – down to about $300 per 10Gbps port, Cisco says.

“It lets you take the Nexus fabric and scale it to as much as you want,” says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group. “It’s a good way to get people started (with Nexus switching) at relatively low price/points and extend it without waiting for the (higher-end Nexus) 7000.”

Cisco says it has 2,000 customers and 1 million ports shipped of the Nexus 2000 line. The 2232 and 2248 are both available this quarter at an entry price of $9,000.

For pure FibreChannel deployments, Cisco unveiled the MDS 9148 SAN switch. It supports 48 8Gbps FibreChannel ports in a 1 RU footprint. It is intended as a complement to the existing 8Gbps FibreChannel modules for the chassis-based MDS 9500 SAN switch.

Analysts say the density of the 9148 in that configuration is impressive, but that Cisco is late to the 8Gbps FibreChannel party, which Cisco previously acknowledged.

“Eight gig FibreChannel’s been out there for a while so it’s hard to get too excited about it,” Kerravala says.  Users began migrating to 8Gbps FibreChannel in the second half of 2008.

The MDS 9148 will be available from Cisco partners this quarter.

Cisco also rolled a dedicated appliance for provisioning virtual switching service to virtual machines. The Nexus 1010 hosts virtual services, such as the Nexus 1000V virtual switch, to ease installation and bestow “ownership” of virtual services to the network administrator instead of the server administrator. The Nexus 1010 also supports network analysis down to the virtual machine layer.

The Nexus 1010 costs $25,000 and will be available this quarter.

Read more about data center in Network World’s Data Center section.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
April 6, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell hopes to grab a bigger slice of the cloud infrastructure market with a new line of PowerEdge servers that the company announced on Wednesday.

The new PowerEdge C servers are aimed at service providers running busy Web sites and public cloud computing services, as well as enterprises building “private clouds” to deliver on-demand application services internally.

Dell said it would “take the guesswork” out of building public and private clouds by selling the servers in “turnkey cloud solutions” that include packages of hardware, software and implementation services.

The servers are an outgrowth of Dell’s Data Center Solutions division, which works closely with Web giants like Microsoft and Facebook to build custom servers for their online operations. The division designed some of the servers running Microsoft’s Azure platform, for example.

The DCS group works only with very large customers that buy tens of thousands of servers. To reach a wider audience, Dell created a few servers similar to the designs it built for those customers and is offering them for the first time as standard, listed products in the form of the C servers launched Wednesday.

It announced three PowerEdge C servers initially: the C1100, for high-memory configurations, the C2100, for data analytics and storage, and the C6100, a “four-node cloud and cluster optimized shared infrastructure server.” They are 1u and 2u rackmount servers based on four- and six-core Intel Xeon 5500/5600 processors.

The systems are not like typical servers and won’t appeal to all customers. They strip out some features, like redundant power supplies, to make the servers more energy efficient, but that also makes them less reliable. They are designed to run in specialized cloud environments with software that can route around hardware failures and keep applications running.

That means selling them will require education for both Dell’s sales teams and its customers. But they could help Dell to compete better with rival cloud offerings like HP’s Extreme Scale-Out systems, IBM’s iDataPlex servers and power-optimized cloud products from SGI and others.

“We’re going to be very clear to our sales force and our customers that these are for those rarefied environments where you have this type of software infrastructure,” Barton George, Dell’s cloud evangelist, said in an interview last month. “If you were to run SAP or a database or a file server on one of these systems it would be a disaster. It wouldn’t work.”

Dell’s first turnkey cloud package is a platform-as-a-service offering that addresses “the key issues around Web application development and deployment,” which Dell says are unpredictable traffic, the fear of under-provisioning, and migration from development to production. The package bundles Dell’s C servers with cloud software from Joyent and some implementation and support services.

Within a couple of months it will offer C servers configured with Canonical’s Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud software, and with data warehousing and analytics tools from Aster Data and Greenplum. Systems with Microsoft and VMware software will follow late this summer, said Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of Dell’s server platforms group.

Dell is offering workshops and services to help companies design and deploy a cloud infrastructure, as well as technical support. It expects the servers to be used for running newer, Web-based applications written in PHP and Ruby on Rails, rather than for legacy applications, Norrad said.

They are intended for companies that will buy “a few racks, or a few hundred servers” at a time, he said — in other words, smaller customers than the DCS unit has dealt with in the past, but still of a reasonable size. They are also targeted at high-performance computing customers.

Images and specifications for the C servers are posted here on Dell’s Web site.

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By John Ribeiro
IDG News Service (Bangalore Bureau)
March 30, 2010

BANGALORE - A protest action by Greenpeace in Europe and India against Dell may continue for many days, and be extended to the U.S. in the next stage, a spokeswoman for the environment group said on Monday.

Greenpeace wants, at the least, Dell to outline the company’s road map to rid its products of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) by 2011, said Iza Kruszewska, toxics campaigner at Greenpeace International.

“They don’t have to put it on their Web site, but it would give us more assurance if they let us see it under a non-disclosure agreement,” she said.

The environmental group is also demanding that Dell take a stand and lobby for the ban of PVC and BFRs in a revision of the European Union’s RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electronics) Directive.

A legislative requirement to eliminate PVC and BFRs across the sector would level the playing field for all electronics companies, and bring down costs as there will be mass uptake from suppliers, Kruszewska said. It would also mean that a large number of electronics makers, which are not part of the 18 companies in the campaign to eliminate harmful chemicals, would have to accept the new norms, she added.

Greenpeace held protests outside Dell offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam and Copenhagen on Monday.

Officials at Greenpeace said that the environmental group planned the action ahead of a meeting on Monday at Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. During the meeting company CEO Michael Dell is scheduled to discuss a variety of environmental issues including a road map for the transition to products free of PVC and BFRs.

“We will see what we could get today [from Dell], and that would determine how long our action continues for,” Kruszewska said.

In Amsterdam, Greenpeace activists spread foam outside Dell’s office to convey that Dell should eliminate toxic chemicals from its products, Kruszewska said. “Michael Dell drop the toxics” was a key slogan at the protests in Bangalore.

A Dell spokeswoman in Bangalore said she was unaware of the meeting in Texas. The company stands by its commitment to rid its products of PVC and BFRs in their products by 2011, she added.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
March 30, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell hopes to grab a bigger slice of the cloud infrastructure market with a new line of PowerEdge servers that the company announced on Wednesday.

The new PowerEdge C servers are aimed at service providers running busy Web sites and public cloud computing services, as well as enterprises building “private clouds” to deliver application services on demand internally.

Dell said it would “take the guesswork” out of building public and private clouds by selling the servers in “turnkey cloud solutions” that include packages of hardware, software and implementation services.

The servers are an outgrowth of Dell’s Data Center Solutions division, which works closely with Web giants like Microsoft and Facebook to build custom servers for their online operations.

The DCS group works only with very large customers that buy tens of thousands of servers. To reach a wider audience, Dell created a few servers similar to the designs it built for those customers and is offering them for the first time as standard, listed products in the form of the C servers launched Wednesday.

It announced three PowerEdge C servers initially: the C1100, for high-memory configurations, the C2100, for data analytics and storage, and the C6100, a “four-node cloud and cluster optimized shared infrastructure server.” Pricing and configurations weren’t available early Wednesday. Dell was due to introduce the systems as part of an overall briefing about its enterprise strategy with reporters in San Francisco Wednesday.

The systems are not typical servers and won’t appeal to all customers. They strip out some features, like redundant power supplies, in order to reduce power consumption and thus operational costs, but that also makes them less reliable than typical rackmount servers. They are designed to run in specialized cloud environments with software that can route around hardware failures and keep applications running.

That means selling them will require education for both Dell’s sales teams and its customers. But they could help Dell to compete better with rival cloud offerings like HP’s Extreme Scale-Out systems, IBM’s iDataPlex servers and power-optimized cloud products from SGI and others.

“We’re going to be very clear to our sales force and our customers that these are for those rarefied environments where you have this type of software infrastructure,” Barton George, Dell’s cloud evangelist, said in an interview last month. “If you were to run SAP or a database or a file server on one of these systems it would be a disaster. It wouldn’t work.”

Dell’s first turnkey cloud package is a platform-as-a-service offering that addresses “the key issues around web application development and deployment,” which Dell says are unpredictable traffic, the fear of under-provisioning and migration from development to production. The package bundles Dell’s C series servers with cloud software from Joyent and some implementation and support services.

Other new software partners in its cloud program are Canonical, Aster Data and Greenplum. Dell will also offer services to help companies design, deploy and maintain a cloud infrastructure.

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By Anh Nguyen
Computerworld UK
March 19, 2010

LONDON - Computer giant Dell said it has halved negative sentiment about its brand through the proactive use of social media.
Kelly Bridge, head of digital media communications, EMEA & Global Public Sector at Dell, told the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit in London how the company reaches out to customers via the internet to improve its brand image.

“In 2007, we got a group of senior online escalation agents to have conversations with customers via blogs and forums. This resulted in a 50 percent reduction in negative sentiment,” she said.

According to Bridge, Dell gets 4,000 mentions a day online, the majority of which is not on the Dell website. The company encourages these mentions by being active in a range of social media outlets. These include personal and company accounts on Twitter and a community blog, Direct2Dell.

Dell also runs Ideastorm, a forum that allows customers to suggest ideas of how to improve the business and its products. The customer community then votes the ideas up or down, and each month Dell looks for the top 40 ideas to implement in its business.

As a result, Bridge said that the company has so far implemented 400 ideas from customers. She added that the Direct2Dell blogs attract millions of views.

Bridge highlighted the importance of measuring social media activity to assess how well it supports business objectives.

“We’ve linked our blogs with the [Dell] website so you can tell when customers are reading the blogs and go on to purchase something,” said Bridge.

Meanwhile, when responding to customers online, Bridge said it is important to join their conversation on a customer level, and not to do a marketing pitch.

“Make sure you read all of the blogs and posts and respond to customers in a personalised tone. Customers expect you to be where they are, and expect you to be useful,” she said.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
March 9, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - EMC today announced an upgrade to the management software on its Celerra network-attached storage (NAS) arrays that will allow administrators to apply deduplication, thin provisioning and business continuity tools to data stored in VMware environments.

EMC’s new Celerra Plug-Ins for VMware Environments adds several new capabilities, including an automated failback process for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager software. When one offsite Celerra array fails, it automatically fails over to another Celerra array — either at the same site or in the primary data center.

EMC had previously been offering the upgrades for Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage area networks (SANs), but it is now offering those capabilities for NFS [Network File System protocol] environments, too.

Brad Bunce, director of unified storage marketing for EMC, said the free upgrades also allow storage deduplication for individual virtual machines, reducing the amount of storage required on Celerra arrays supporing them by as much as 50%.

“When you deploy VMware over Celerra an administrator can select which machines should be configured in compressed mode and which should run in full-sized mode,” Bunce said. “The greater flexibility is that a VMware administrator can also selectively uncompress VMware data stores as well.”

The new plug-ins also allow for thin provisioning — the ability to add storage capacity as an application requires it — as well as data cloning, or data snap shots of virtual data stores on Celerra, Bunce said. “People like to do clones of virtual machines for tests,” he said. “So when you want to deploy a thousand new virtual machines through cloning…, that’s a couple of hours of time saved.”

The plug-ins also automate the failback process for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager software in NFS environments, which is unique to the industry.

The EMC Celerra Plug-Ins for VMware Environments are available for download to EMC Celerra customers with current maintenance arrangements. All enhancements are available from EMC, Dell and its authorized partners.

In addition, customers leveraging the new Celerra software can work with EMC Global Services to accelerate their VMware deployments with EMC’s end-to-end consulting, implementation, residency and education services.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld . Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com .

Read more about storage in Computerworld’s Storage Knowledge Center.

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By Carrie-Ann Skinner
PC Advisor (UK)
March 3, 2010

LONDON - Micro-blogging service Twitter is thought to be preparing to serve adverts to its users.

According to story on the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD website, the ads will be linked to Twitter searches. For example a search for ‘laptop’ may generate an ad from Dell.

AllThingsD also said the 140 characters or less adverts will only be shown in search results, or add-on services such as TweetDeck that have agreed with Twitter to display the ads.

“Everyone I’ve talked to cautions that the plans are evolving and that there are plenty of details to work out,” said Peter Kafka on the AllThingsDsite.

However, Twitter has yet to reveal pricing and a launch date.

Twitter engineer Alex Payne added to the speculation when he revealed that the Micro-blogging service is set to get some new features.

“If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon),” he said in a tweet, which has since been removed.

Payne then added that the “web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives”.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
March 2, 2010

TAIPEI - New low-cost smartphones running Google’s Android software have been launched in Taiwan recently and the good news is they should start showing up just about everywhere soon.

A new group of companies, electronics contract manufacturers, are starting to make high-end mobile phones, including smartphones, for mobile network operators around the world, and these are companies adept at slashing prices.

These manufacturers are companies many people in the West have never heard of, such as Quanta Computer, which makes laptop PCs for global giants including Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Quanta made an Android smartphone for network operator Taiwan Mobile, which launched on Tuesday. Another company, Commtiva Technology, a subsidiary of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturing company, Hon Hai Precision Industry, built an Android handset for Far EasTone Telecommunications, another Taiwanese network operator.

Taiwan has traditionally led the way with cost cutting in everything from PCs to game consoles and mobile phones, through low cost manufacturing on the island and in China. The prices of the two new smartphones are around half that of comparable models from major handset vendors. Taiwan Mobile next week will start selling the TWM T1 smartphone for NT$8,990 (US$280) with no service contract.

With a contract, the TWM T1 is still about half the price of comparable Android smartphones from major vendors, such as Samsung Electronics and High Tech Computer (HTC).

Taiwan Mobile offers the TWM T1 for NT$4,880 with a minimum monthly handset payment of NT$401 added to a user’s phone bill over 12 months, which compares to a Samsung Galaxy i7500 for NT$11,100 with the same monthly payment, and the HTC Tattoo for NT$8,190 with the NT$401 monthly payment.

The price difference is partly caused by specifications on the phones. The TWM T1 sports a 3.2-inch touchscreen and a 3-megapixel camera, while the Samsung Galaxy has a better 3.2-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera. The HTC Tattoo comes with a 2.8-inch touchscreen and 3.2-megapixel camera.

One example of the price of a full-featured Android smartphone is Google’s Nexus One, which retails at US$530 without a contract.

Far EasTone unveiled the Commtiva T1 earlier this month for NT$9,990 (US$311) with no contract, billed as the first Android smartphone available in Taiwan for under NT$10,000. The device has a 3.2-inch touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera.

Far EasTone plans to launch four or five Android smartphones exclusively made for the company this year, according to Alison Kao, a spokeswoman at the company. Far EasTone expects its smartphone sales overall to rise as much as 30 percent this year compared to last year.

Angela Lu, a Taiwan Mobile representative, said the company became interested in Android handsets as a way to provide low-cost phones with features its customers want and the Taiwan Mobile brand on the phone. She declined to say how many own-brand Android handsets Taiwan Mobile might launch this year.

The arrival of the smartphones heralds the beginning of price reductions on Android smartphones for consumers. The contract manufacturers developing the handsets are experts at making electronic devices and normally operate on slim profit margins, often below 5 percent, which is far less than, say, HTC, which reported a 32 percent gross profit margin in the fourth quarter.

The trend is in its early stages. Smartphones, handsets, mobile Internet devices and other communications accessories make up less than 1 percent of Quanta’s total sales currently, according to Carol Hsu, a company representative. The laptop maker is working on smartphones with a few different operating systems, not just Android.

Commtiva declined to comment for this report.

A new wave of even lower cost Android smartphones should hit store shelves later this year due to the efforts of chip vendors around the world to create inexpensive hardware packages that include just about the entire insides of a mobile phone. Chips are among the most expensive parts in a smartphone so the work of chip makers, from Qualcomm to Infineon and Taiwan’s MediaTek, to lower prices is important. These companies have been rolling out low-cost reference designs for smartphones, sort of like generic smartphone-making kits, based on their chips.

Indeed, the Mobile World Congress, which wrapped up last week in Spain, highlighted opening smartphones to the masses by introducing low-cost devices, according to Gartner analyst Jon Erensen.

“Lower-cost smartphones will be required to reach the mass market,” he wrote in Gartner’s Semiconductor DQ Monday Report. “At Mobile World Congress, semiconductor vendors highlighted lower-cost, highly integrated, entry-level smartphone solutions designed to significantly reduce the bill of materials for smartphones and enable handset vendors to reach new price points.”

Infineon, for example, launched its XMM 6181 package of chips and other hardware, focused on making Android smartphones that cost around US$150, during the Mobile World Congress.

Earlier this month, MediaTek and Microsoft announced a package of hardware based on MediaTek chips and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS aimed at electronics manufacturers in China. The hope is that companies in China will make cheap smartphones for people around the world, particularly in emerging markets. A similar package with MediaTek hardware and Google’s Android software is due out in the second half of this year.

In the near term, the work Taiwanese contract manufacturers are doing will drive an initial wave of smartphone price reductions. Over the longer term - it takes several months to design a handset based on new chips - chip vendors will keep prices moving lower.

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By Nora Terrado

Despite the prevalence of conspiracy theories and climate change skepticism, man-made global warming is a widely accepted fact, and one that most scientists agree upon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), suggests that the observed increase in global temperatures is very likely due to observed increase in human greenhouse gas concentration.

Green computing, the practice of efficient and ecofriendly IT, is becoming today’s norm. Addressing the need to minimize the environmental impact of computing resources, which accounts to three percent of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has become even more crucial as computers play increasingly important roles in our daily lives.

Coincidentally, pundits believe that IT itself is the answer to addressing the eco-compliance needs of the remaining 96% to 97% of GHG contributors.

The work has already been started as IT companies the world over tread on the green path. Many corporations are adapting environmentally sustainable ways to conduct their business, with some even going great lengths to accommodate full ecological compliance. Citing a survey, Jose Iglesias of Symantec Corporation writes, “of more than 1,000 large enterprises in 15 countries, nine out of 10 IT organizations see their role in minimizing their company’s environmental footprint as very or extremely significant.”

The high-tech industry, during the 2009 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, has pledged substantial reduction of its carbon footprint. According to TheDailyGreen.com’s Brian Clark Howard, technology titans Google, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems have all joined with the EPA, the World Wildlife Fund and others to develop an ambitious industry-wide goal of slashing the amount of energy computers consume. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative has the goal of reducing computer energy use by 50% by 2010.

“If there’s follow-through, the scheme is expected to save $5.5 billion in energy costs and cut emissions by 54 million tons a year, the equivalent of 11 million cars or 20 coal-fired power plants,” writes Howard on 5 Signs the Computer Industry is Going Green.

Philippine companies are not far behind the green trend. Across sectors, Filipino organizations have followed, and in some cases, are leading the new green revolution.

In real estate, Ayala Land is developing the country’s foremost eco-sustainable community. Nuvali, located 40 minutes south of Metro Manila, is touted as the country’s largest and most environmentally friendly business district.

One of Nuvali’s first tenants is relationship management service provider, Convergys. Its Nuvali TechnoHub features green architecture and boasts an abundance of trees and shrubbery for better environmental air quality and habitat enhancement.

The energy sector also fronts key players in the sustainability practice. One of the more popular companies in this industry is Solar Electric Company (Solarco), developers of the E-jeepney, which is known as pioneers of home solar system in the Philippines.

On the other hand, ECHOStore leads the retail sector in promoting the use and consumption of environmentfriendly products. Located at Fort Bonifacio, the store doubles as a hub where people can exchange ideas about sustainable living.

From the corporate to the individual level, green computing is slowly being adapted by Filipino users.

Forecasts on green computing point upward as manufacturers take notice of the increasing environmental awareness of consumers, prompting further research and development of earth-friendly products.

A study by the US-based Consumer Electronics Association indicates that more consumers are inclined towards buying “green” electronics, with 89% expecting their next purchase to be “green.”

Cost poses as a huge hurdle for Filipino consumers. However, the practice of green computing and eco-friendliness in general enjoys continually growing support in the country.

In 2009, 15 million Filipinos in 647 cities and towns participated in the hour-long lights off initiative of Earth Hour, a considerable jump from a year earlier which garnered one million participants. The 10-fold jump in the number of participants was attributed to the Filipinos’ increasing awareness of climate change and its effects, according to Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Thanks to the media, particularly the Internet, the global citizenry is becoming more aware of the adverse effects of climate change. With the effective tools of mass communication, it is only an issue of doing away with apathy and adopting genuine concern for Mother Nature that separates us to a greener future.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
February 3, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell is hatching a plan to take some of the custom servers designed by its Data Center Solutions division for Web giants such as Yahoo and Facebook and sell them to a wider range of companies, including large enterprises, Dell executives said.

The DCS unit was formed about three years ago to help Dell get more business from large Internet firms. Its engineers often spend several weeks on-site with those companies to design low-cost, low-power systems that meet the special requirements of their search, social networking and other Web applications.

That hands-on role means the DCS group designs servers only for large companies, such as Ask.com and Microsoft’s Azure division, which order tens of thousands of servers per year. But that’s about to change, Dell executives said in an interview.

Later this year Dell will turn some of those custom servers into standardized products and sell them to companies that order lower volumes of systems, including enterprises building “private cloud” environments in their data centers, and a second tier of smaller Internet companies. They will likely be sold under a new brand, CloudEdge.

“What we’ve found is, there are a whole bunch of other customers who want access to those designs but who are not buying in those types of quantities,” said Andy Rhodes, a director with Dell’s DCS group. “So the big thing we’re solving now, and we’ll talk more publically about over the next couple of months, is how to provide more of that capability to many, many more customers.”

Dell isn’t discussing specific products yet and is still working out details, such as whether the servers will be sold by DCS or through Dell’s standard server channels. But the goal is to offer the designs to a wider market, even while DCS continues to do custom work for very large customers. “We’re not announcing anything right now, but that is definitely something we will announce this year,” Rhodes said.

DCS aims to build highly energy-efficient servers that pack a lot of computing power into a small space. The systems often forego redundant power supplies and fans, for example, which saves on component costs and energy bills.

That also makes the servers less resilient to failure — a trade-off large Internet companies are willing to make for lower operational costs. Companies such as Google and Yahoo design their Web applications to run on such “fail in place” architectures, so that workloads are rerouted around failed servers with little or no disruption to services.

“The main thing with these hyperscale systems is that the availability and resiliency are baked into the customers’ applications rather than into the hardware,” said Barton George, cloud evangelist for Dell.

That means the servers aren’t suitable for most enterprise applications, and it remains to be seen how Dell will position the new servers for enterprise use.

“We’re going to be very clear to our sales force and our customers that these are for those rarefied environments where you have this type of software infrastructure,” George said. “If you were to run SAP or a database or a file server on one of these systems it would be a disaster. It wouldn’t work.”

Dell is likely to bundle the CloudEdge systems with software tools for a variety of usage scenarios, including building and managing public and private clouds. Rhodes suggested that tools from Microsoft and VMware will be offered, as well as provisioning and orchestration software from Dell partner Scalent Systems.

“The markets we’re looking at are people building public clouds, but one tier below what we’ve been focusing on,” George said. Large enterprises will also be a target, he said.

The systems could help Dell compete better with Hewlett-Packard, which last July announced a similar line of Extreme Scale-Out systems, and with IBM’s highly dense iDataPlex servers. SGI and other vendors also target this market.

Dell doesn’t break out the DCS group’s financial results so it is hard to know how well it is performing, but Rhodes said the division has “grown massively in terms of revenue and units.” The group is working closely with 20 customers, mostly household Internet names in the U.S. and China, he said.

That’s fewer than the number of companies DCS has said it was engaged with in the past.

“What we found was, when you’re developing a customized business, you really want to create customer intimacy and go deeper and partner much more with them. To do that, we scaled the customer list back slightly and we’re going to serve the rest of the markets with these mainstream products when we announce them,” Rhodes said.

The group hasn’t disclosed many of its server designs, in part because its large customers demand secrecy. It has published details of one server that uses Nano processors from Via technologies, and crams 12 server boards into a 2u chassis. Most systems use Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors.

Forrester analyst Frank Gillett said it makes sense for Dell to market its custom designs to other customers, but noted that “they’re not designed for standard IT stuff and you need to know exactly what you’re doing with them.”

“It sounds like something for the oil and gas guys who need a bunch of servers to crunch seismic analyses, or the guys on Wall Street doing risk analysis,” he said. “It’s for the companies running applications that look like Web-scale or cloud-scale compute problems, which are not conventional applications.”

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By Veronica C. Silva
Computerworld Philippines
January 19, 2010

The local office of computer maker Dell, Inc. is hoping to grow its business this year with a focus on the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market.

Taking its cue from market forecasts that global economy recovery is expected in the second half this year, Dell Philippines is optimistic that the SMBs would be more willing to invest in information technology, particularly for their own servers.

Dell Philippines launched on Thursday its 11th generation of servers geared for SMBs. The Intel Xeon-based servers are specifically designed for the SMBs,. said Dell Asia Pacific director and country manager Barry Bunyi, who debunked industry claims that there is such a thing as “one size fits all” for servers.

“After last year’s economic downturn, there is no reason to look backward anymore,” said Bunyi, referring to a recent forecast that the second half will show more promise for the IT industry.
Bunyi is also optimistic for the second half of the year since that time, the May 2010 elections would be over.

“We look forward to 2010 with initiatives in certain markets (such as) the SMBs,” he added.

Bunyi said Dell’s commercial business, which includes the servers, make up “majority” of its business. The other business segment for Dell is consumer, which includes laptops and desktops.

Dell’s SMB server line-up is a complete solution in a box to include email, internet connectivity, internal websites, remote access, mobile device support, file and printer sharing, backup and restore, data protection and more. These servers are the PowerEdge line with models T110, T210, T310 and R510.

Bunyi said these 11th generation servers are 60 per cent to 80 per cent better than the previous released servers.

Dell processor partner Intel said the Xeon 5500 series processor supports dual processor server and workstation configurations.
Intel’s Prakash Mallya, regional manager for Dell Asia Pacific with Japan Account Team, urged SMBs not to decrease in IT spending at a time of an economic downturn.

But he remains optimistic that SMBs will invest in IT this year as he cited an Intel-commissioned study which showed that 85% of SMBs studied in 2009 believe that the economy will pick up this year.
Dell and Intel added that the Xeon servers are giving SMBs another option aside from outsourcing their IT needs to third party service providers.

Mallya said that for SMBs that cannot outsource their IT requirements due to constraints such as high-speed connectivity to a data centre, regulatory requirements and security, SMBs can opt to set up their own server environment.

Bunyi added that Dell, after listening to the market, has made these technologies available to SMBs now to give them options for their IT requirements.

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By Computerworld Philippines Staff
January 7, 2010

Local players in the Philippine ICT industry recently took the stage in December during the 2nd CyberPress ICT Choice Awards given out by the country’s association of IT journalists.

Three persons and entities were honored in the event as they made their mark despite the financial crisis that hit 2009 affecting individuals and companies alike.

The awarding ceremony, which was conducted alongside the group’s Christmas party, picked this year’s achievers in five categories, namely: IT Story of the Year, IT Product of the Year, IT Startup of the Year, IT Executive of the Year, and IT Company of the Year.

It was also the start of the Lifetime Achievement Award by CyberPress meant to honor personalities who contributed immensely to the development of the local IT industry. The first recipient of the award is Dr. William “Bill” Torres, hailed as the “Father of Philippine Internet.”

As cofounder and former CEO of Mozcom, the country’s first commercial ISP, Torres spearheaded the negotiations with the US government in the 1990s to bring Internet to the Philippines. He also holds the distinction as the first Filipino to acquire a PhD degree in computer science in the US.

In his acceptance speech, Torres said it is important for the country to take advantage of the benefits offered by technology. He cited, in particular, the cloud computing model, which he said is ideal for a developing nation like the Philippines.

Voted as IT Story of the Year was “Smartmatic-TIM undertakes 2010 election automation project.” It won over four nominated IT-related stories such as the IBM-GSIS feud, Cloud Computing, Unlimited Mobile Services, and the Explosion of Social Networking particularly during the Ondoy typhoon calamity.

Windows 7, Microsoft’s newest operating system bagged the award for IT Product of the Year. It outvoted the iPhone 3GS, iPod Nano, Globe Tattoo and Canon 500D products. The IT press acclaimed it as light and efficient, saying the OS was a big improvement by Vista. Microsoft Philippines country manager John Bessey accepted the trophy.

The IT Startup of the Year was Inovent Inc., a new Filipino tech company that unveiled in 2009 a prototype of an LCD interactive television (iTV) set, claiming to be the first of its kind to be produced in the Philippines. The categories other nominees were Sulit.com.ph and ANTS.

Chosen as IT Executive of the Year was Ricky Banaag, who has become a virtual institution in the local tech industry by leading Intel Microelectronics Philippines for the 12th straight year. He has also provided a steady hand to Intel despite the closure of the company’s manufacturing arm in 2009.

Banaag outvoted three IT executives, namely Ramon Arteficio, president and CEO, Canon Marketing (Philippines) Inc.; Manuel Wong, general manager, Acer Philippines; Vicky Agorrilla, country manager, Lenovo Philippines; and Ryan Guadalquiver, managing director, HP Philippines.

Finally, the IT Company of the Year award was given to Acer Philippines as it exceeded expectations in 2009 by becoming the top PC vendor in the country. Globally, it now threatens HP after knocking out Dell at number two, the IT press said.

The list of nominees for the awards was drawn up during the CyberPress leadership seminar last December 5 to 6 in Baras, Rizal. CyberPress members, composed of journalists from the print, online and broadcast media then voted for their choices via an online poll.

The CyberPress ICT Choice Awards follows the lead of other press groups which have been bestowing awards over the years in their respective sectors. Examples include the “Athlete of the Year” award of the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) and the “Car of the Year” award of the motoring press corps. 

Officially named as IT Journalist Association of the Philippines (ITJAP), CyberPress is the first IT press club established in South East Asia (SEA) in mid-1996 and remains to be the only IT media organization in the Philippines. – Tom S. Noda

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By Jason Cross
PC World (US)
December 25, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Thinking about picking up one of those Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks? Good news! The company has announced that the product line has been refreshed to include the new Intel Atom N450 processor (the newly announced Atom that previously went under the code name Pineview). The N450 clocks in at 1.66 GHz and incorporates a new integrated graphics processor.

The new CPU promises better performance and battery life - Dell claims about 9 1/2 hours using a 6-cell battery. You can further get the new Mini 10 with a standard (1024×600) or high res (1366×768) display, an optional TV tuner, optional mobile broadband and GPS, and a 160GB or 250GB hard drive. One disappointing note: it looks like the systems will still be limited to 1GB of DDR2-800 RAM.

The new integrated graphics processor may be a step up from the one Intel bundled with its previous netbook platform, but it’s still not powerful enough to run most 3D games and it’s lacking in video decoding capabilities. Dell will offer an optional Broadcom Crystal HD decoder option to enable smooth video playback, so you can watch those HD YouTube and Hulu videos without stuttering.

Don’t look for the new systems on Dell.com just yet - the reconfigured models go on sale in January, with some of the options coming on board later in the first quarter of 2010. Prices will start at $299, as with the current Mini 10, but expect to pay up to $499 for lots of optional features.

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By Anuradha Shukla
MIS Asia
December 15, 2009

SINGAPORE - Dell entered the social media space more than three years ago and this move has enabled the computer giant to expand connections with customers, says Lionel Menchaca, the chief blogger for Dell’s virtual community.

When Dell forayed into this arena, it did not realise that social media would gradually become a way to listen and learn from its customers. What started out as a way to connect and respond to customers has now become a powerful customer engagement channel.

One million views on Flickr

Menchaca said that Dell moved on to IdeaStorm after starting with a blog, and then decided to tweet on Twitter as well as connect on Facebook. She noted the huge popularity of Dell’s Flickr page, which has seen more than one million views.

The company then decided to use a YouTube channel to share pictures and video content it was producing for Dell’s virtual community, Direct2Dell. The success of Dell.com support.Dell.com and the Dell community forum convinced the company’s execs that the Web was the right tool for connecting directly with customers.

Social media allowed Dell to share with customers what the company was all about and how its people focused on making technology work to improve the lives of people.

US$6.5 million in revenue from Twitter

According to Menchaca, Dell’s global community boasts more than 3.5 million people across the social web, but is still only a small part of the 2 billion connects it has with customers worldwide every year via phone, e-mail, et cetera.

While @DellOutlet announced US$3 million in revenue from Twitter in June, in total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter resulted in more than US$6.5 million in product revenue. The company has experienced growth in its Brazilian and Canadian accounts also. Twitter enthusiasts in Canada requested Dell Canada to come online and the company obliged.

The @DellnoBrasil site has generated about US$800,000 in product revenues in less than a year of its launch, and @DellHomeSalesCA has already surpassed US$150,000. Menchaca suggests that Dell streamline its presence in social media networks in future and continue growing the number of connections with its customers in those places.

Menchaca suggests that Dell build tighter integration between its Dell community sites and continue focusing on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
December 1, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - IBM retained its narrow lead over Hewlett-Packard in the worldwide server market as sales began to stabilize during the third quarter, Gartner said Monday.

IBM took 31.7 percent of server revenue in the three months to Oct. 31, up a fraction from last year, while HP’s share stayed more or less flat at 30.2 percent, Gartner said. They were followed at a distance by Dell, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu.

Server revenue overall dropped 15.5 percent from the third quarter last year, to $10.7 billion. But it was up by 10.2 percent compared to the second quarter this year, Gartner said.

“It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective,” Gartner Research Vice President Jeffrey Hewitt said in a statement. The server market is “showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009.”

All the top vendors bar one saw their server revenue improve from the second quarter. The exception was Sun Microsystems, whose business has been hit by uncertainty surrounding its acquisition by Oracle.

Sun’s server revenue was down 32.3 percent from the third quarter last year, much more than its main rivals, according to Gartner. It remained the top seller of Unix systems by volume, but its lead was pared down from a year earlier as shipments declined by almost half.

In terms of dollars spent, HP overtook Sun to become the second-largest Unix vendor behind IBM. HP grew its share of Unix systems revenue from 28 percent to 29.3 percent, while Sun’s declined from 29.2 percent to 24.2 percent, Gartner said. IBM’s share increased from 36.4 percent to 40.9 percent.

The Unix server market overall was worth $2.6 billion, a drop of 21.2 percent from the third quarter last year.

Industry-standard servers fared a little better. Sales of x86-based systems declined by 11.4 percent from last year, to $6.3 billion. HP retained its dominant lead, followed by Dell, IBM, Fujitsu and NEC

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Style-minded people who place a premium on precision craftsmanship and design can now add Adamo to their list of must-have items for 2009. Dell unveiled the world’s thinnest* laptop as a kick off to the new Adamo by Dell brand.

Adamo, derived from the Latin word meaning “to fall in love,” will serve as a flagship in a line of products created to disrupt the personal computing space with the combination of new design aesthetics, personalization choices and sought-after technologies.

The News:

* Adamo is the pinnacle of craftsmanship and design and features:
* A chassis milled from a single piece of aluminum featuring precision detailing and a scalloped backlit keyboard
* Striking high definition edge-to-edge glass display
* Fully connected with WiFi, Bluetooth™ and optional integrated mobile broadband** and full complement of connectivity ports with no compromises
* Cool, quiet and robust solid state drives
* Available in Onyx and Pearl colors with a broad range of complementary accessories

Quotes:

* “Great design needs to be timeless and evoke emotion in people”, said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dell’s consumer products. ”While a premium computing experience was assumed for Adamo, the intent was for people to see, touch and explore Adamo and be rewarded by the select materials and craftsmanship you would expect in a fine watch.”
* “Dell continues to signal a commitment to design and personalization across its entire product line and has made significant strides forward in the past year,” said Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group. “The Adamo laptop is a showcase for this commitment and a flagship product that will draw buyers to the brand.”

People who choose Adamo will be offered a unique color matched collection of Adamo by Dell branded peripherals and accessories including, in the U.S. an exclusive line of bags from TUMI. Choices will include:

* External storage option with 250GB*** or 500GB*** external hard drive.
* External DVD+/-RW or Blu-ray disc™ drive.
* 8GB*** USB drive.
* Connectors and cables including DisplayPort to HDMI, DVI, and VGA.
* Adamo Premium Service (US Only):
* 24/7 access to Dell’s best trained technicians
* Consistent communication with a dedicated personal team

The Adamo by Dell brand is being supported by innovative and new approaches to marketing and promotion for Dell. Designed to challenge people’s perceptions of what a computer is, the Adamo by Dell brand was inspired by fashion, luxury brands and timeless design.

Dell has looked beyond traditional approaches to reaching computer shoppers and launched a provocative campaign featuring:

* A stylish worldwide print campaign shot by acclaimed British-based photographer Nadav Kander and featuring high-fashion models that reinforces the “fall in love” positioning. Kander, whose work is celebrated in galleries worldwide, also shot the moving portfolio, “Obama’s People,” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine earlier this year.
* AdamoByDell.com, the centerpiece of the campaign and a highly stylized site where viewers can learn about Adamo, register for updates and, beginning today, place orders. Since its launch last month, AdamoByDell.com has attracted nearly 800,000 unique visitors from around the world and more than 1 million page views.
* Artful packaging in which the product arrives “floating” in a clear box with minimal clutter - a beautiful experience for a sophisticated product.

Product Specifications:

* Intel Core 2 Duo processors with Intel® Centrino® technology
* DDR3 system memory
* 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display
* Draft-Wireless N
* High-performance solid state drives standard
* Bluetooth 2.1
* Mobile Broadband* option
* Up to 5+ hours of battery life (preliminary)****
* 2 USB ports, 1 USB/eSATA combo port, Display Port, RJ-45 port
* Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-bit

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Hard-core gamers and technology enthusiasts will find much to celebrate with the new Alienware M15x from Dell. The new Alienware M15x is the most powerful 15-inch gaming notebook in the universe and delivers a pulse-pounding, life-like experience.

In support of the launch, Dell unveiled a new “All Powerful” marketing campaign to reach gamers throughout the universe and that it will expand Alienware’s presence from six to 35 countries. Just as Dell’s Adamo brand represents premium craftsmanship and design, Alienware represents premium performance in the Dell consumer product portfolio and is the new standard-bearer in the broader gaming and technology space.

The News
As the newest member of Dell’s premium performance brand, the Alienware M15x features:
· Striking design – including anodized aluminum casing, aggressive lines and a unique chassis – that definitely makes a statement in public;
· Uncompromised technology that sets the benchmark within the industry and makes it a key pillar within Dell’s consumer product portfolio; and
· The unique visual ID of the Alienware brand.

Gamers around the world will have access to Alienware’s powerhouse system which includes:
· New Anodized Aluminum Industrial Design with color options and personalized laser engraved nameplate
· Up to Dual 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M graphics processing units (GPUs)* with SLI™ technology
· Configurable with Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Quad-core overclockable Mobile Processor*
· Up to 8GB DDR3* 1333MHz Memory
· 1TB* 7200RPM or 512GB of Solid State Storage Capacity (Raid 0)
· Optional Beyond HD resolution with a WUXGA 1200p (1920 x 1200) Edge-to-Edge LCD design
· Internal Wireless a/g/draft-n with MIMO (2×2) Technology
· Exclusive Alienware Command Center Software Solution
· Exclusive designed AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower™ technology
· Microsoft® Windows Vista® (64 bit)

Quotes
“The Alienware M15x is a gamer’s dream and sets the universal standard for 15-inch laptops that enthusiasts worldwide will love,” said Michael Tatelman, vice president of sales and marketing for Dell’s consumer business. “Alienware’s premium performance is critically important to the larger Dell consumer product portfolio, and our new ‘All Powerful’ branding campaign conveys the brand’s technological strength as much as Adamo conveys precision craftsmanship and design.”

“With the introduction of the Alienware M15x and our aggressive expansion into new countries and new languages, everyone will be able to experience the most innovative and immersive gaming experience,” says Arthur Lewis, general manager of Dell’s Gaming Group. “The M15x sets a new benchmark for combining out-of-this-world performance with the industrial design our customers have come to expect.”

“ Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Quad-core Mobile Processors are the natural next step in gaming laptop performance innovation,” says Randy Stude, director Consumer PC Group, Intel Corporation . “With the combination of this forward-thinking technology and Alienware’s propensity for cutting-edge performance and design, Intel and Dell are setting a new standard for gaming systems worldwide.”

“Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs with NVIDIA SLI Technology is the fastest notebook graphics solution available, so the Alienware M15x is out of this world for gaming,” says Rene Haas, general manager of notebooks at NVIDIA. “Add the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU designed for battery saving operation into the mix, and the M15x is truly a groundbreaking system with its three NVIDIA GPUs.”

‘All Powerful’

Anticipation for the new Alienware landing began a few months ago with the launch of www.allpowerful.com. The site, which heralded the arrival of something new, big and game-changing, attracted nearly 100,000 visitors in its first two weeks, with more than 25 percent registering to witness the arrival of the M15x and become part of the Alienware/Dell gaming community.

Written in Alienware’s custom “alien language,” the site featured a countdown clock timed with the debut of the laptop at U.S. gaming conference, E3, and was available in multiple languages to reflect the brand’s global expansion. In addition, Alienware’s BREED 3D animated short video encouraged gamers to check out the future of Alienware with a preview of ‘All Powerful’. Previous BREED videos introduced these same gamers to the origins of Alienware through the company’s Alien Network and AlienwareChannel on YouTube.

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Computerworld Philippines Staff
November 17, 2009

Malayan Colleges Laguna (MCL) has recently announced its deployment of an IT infrastructure system designed and installed by computing firm Dell, which aims to streamline the college’s operations through automated solutions.

The infrastructure setup by Dell included the installation of an online student enrollment system, an antivirus solution for the entire network infrastructure, servers for MCL’s data center and the provision of Dell Vostro laptops and Dell Optiplex desktops for its employees and computer laboratories.

“We had three months to search for an IT solution to equip our staff, IT labs, and data center,” according to Rolando Bitor, officer-in-charge, MCL Development Office for IT. “Once Dell received confirmation from us to proceed, they worked swiftly to help us meet our targeted rollout date, greatly exceeding expectations.”

Dell consultants installed a series of Dell PowerEdge energy-smart servers in the MCL data center, which enables maximum optimization of power resources because the servers required 25 percent less power than the previous generation models.

A Dell PowerVault MD 3000, a modular disk array, was also installed to back up stored data and assure availability of software within the infrastructure for efficient and effective operations.

Bitor said the IT infrastructure was installed and operational in time for MCL’s opening for its pioneer batch of students, which currently numbers to around 2,600 since it first opened in 2007.

“We saved almost six months’ worth of systems applications integrity tests as a result of the ease in deployment,”he said, adding that the series of tests and dry runs to assure that the software, hardware, and other components of the infrastructure properly meet the computing needs they were intended for. – John Mark V. Tuazon

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
November 10, 2009

FRAMINGHAM (11/09/2009) - Dell and Hewlett-Packard customers are angry that they have not yet received the Windows 7 upgrades promised them when they purchased new PCs earlier this year, according to messages on the companies’ support forums.

The grumbling is reminiscent of criticism in 2007, when Vista upgrades were delayed by weeks .

Last summer, Microsoft announced “Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program,” which would deliver free or discounted Windows 7 upgrades to people who bought new Vista PCs between June 26, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010. The program is administered by computer manufacturers, which set the price and delivery dates. 

“I honestly think that this whole windows 7 “FREE!!!” upgrade is total BS,” said a user identified as “mdr322″ in a message Monday posted to a thread dedicated to upgrade complaints. “It took me 1 month to register my service tag and now my delivery date has been delayed by 2 Weeks!!!!!” 

“Dell is behaving very unprofessionally!” said someone labeled “Vlad G” on the same thread. “I am sure this will cost them customers.”

On the HP support site, users were also frustrated by the delay.

“Inept does not do justice to this royal screw-up,” ranted “littlewhizkid” in a message last week on an HP thread. “Total incompetence is closer, but without using language that would lead my message to being deleted I do not think I could adequately describe how poorly managed this process has been. HP has certainly lost any shred of loyalty I may have had.” 

A Dell representative explained the delay. “These are estimated ship dates,” said “Jesse L,” who was tagged as a Dell employee in the forum, referring to complaints from some users that the delivery date for their upgrade kept being pushed back. “The reason they keep changing is because [of] issues with the shippers’ inventory. They got behind and are working to catch up.”

Other users urged patience. “Did everyone forget that the copy is free, not including possible charges to shipping and taxes?” asked “ravenneangelle” last Wednesday. “And how high in demand this product is? I’m sure Dell is doing their best in getting it all out to us in time.” 

That argument didn’t sit well with some.

“Really? This is Dell doing their best? Not having the software ready to go?” countered Jack Dusty on Friday. “Not having a functioning tracking system? Not providing a download link which would’ve been the easiest solution? This is them doing their best? When they knew Windows 7 was going to be in demand? When they knew before [Oct.] 22 the names and addresses of the people who needed the upgrade? When they had months to prepare? Their best? I don’t think so.” 

Although several users on the Dell support thread said that they had received their Windows 7 upgrade, no one on the HP forum reported that they had gotten theirs. A user tagged as “oldmike” on the HP thread claimed he had e-mailed HP, and gotten a reply that included the line, “We have checked the status of your order. Arvato has received all the required information from your side. It will take some time to complete the process.” 

HP is using California-based Arvato Digital Services to fulfill the Windows 7 upgrade orders.

“What a bunch of baloney!!” said oldmike. “I wrote back to them and asked if they had a clue what ’some time’ meant. I haven’t heard from them since.”

The delays have exhausted the patience of some users. “I got tired of waiting & [and] purchased a copy of Vista Ultimate with the Windows 7 Upgrade Offer,” said “SpeedStep” on the Dell thread. “I purchased the software, logged into Microsoft and put the offer key in. Got the Win7 Ultimate Upgrade DVD in the mail within 5 days with no charge.”

Dell did not reply to a request for comment about its Windows 7 upgrade delays. An HP spokeswoman, however, acknowledged that the upgrades were behind schedule. “There has been a delay in shipping consumer notebook upgrade kits due to extra efforts made by HP’s consumer notebook business to ensure customers will have an easy upgrade experience.” She added that HP would begin shipping upgrades this week.

The free upgrade program has come under fire before. Last month, a consumer watchdog site slammed computer makers for charging as much as $17 for shipping the discs to consumers.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 29, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Dell on Tuesday started shipping its first rugged laptop with a multitouch display, which can operate in extreme environments and withstand drops, dust and spills.

The Latitude XT2 XFR is also the company’s thinnest and lightest rugged touch-screen laptop, the company said. The laptop measures 1.2 inches (38.1 millimeters) at its thinnest point, and weighs 5.4 pounds (2.45 kilograms) with a four-cell battery and solid-state drive. Dell already offers a rugged single-touch-screen laptop, the Latitude E6400 XFR, which has a 14.1-inch screen and weighs 8.5 pounds (3.87 kilograms).

The Latitude XT2 XFR laptop, priced starting at US$3,599, comes with a 12.1-inch four-finger-input multitouch display that can be used to record data, manipulate images, zoom into maps or scroll through documents. The screen has a protective layer so that it resists impact damage.

The laptop is designed to meet the U.S. military’s MIL-810G standards, which define a minimum set of conditions under which such laptops can operate.The laptop can withstand rain and a 3-foot (30.48 centimeters) drop and will operate in temperatures ranging from -10 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 degrees Celsius) to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). The screen also can be flipped for use like a tablet PC.

Touch and stylus interfaces could help field workers such as sales and service technicians complete forms, create status reports or obtain customer signatures, said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman.

“Touch screens come in very handy in patrol cars and service vehicles where users can easily interact with the system without it becoming a distraction, unlike a keyboard or mouse,” Bolen said. “Essentially, touch makes data accessible and collection faster in many cases.”

Companies like Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard are shipping PCs with multitouch displays for businesses. The laptops are designed to input or retrieve customer data or manipulate objects that require higher levels of precision, such as sharply edged images in engineering and design applications.

Dell’s laptop is powered by an Intel ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo SU9600 chip, which runs at 1.6GHz and includes 3MB of cache. It supports up to 5GB of RAM with solid-state drive storage of up to 160GB. With a six-cell battery the laptop can run for up to six hours. The laptop includes multiple wireless communications options including Wi-Fi networking, mobile broadband options and GPS.

The laptop comes with Microsoft’s Windows Vista OS for now, but the recently released Windows 7 will be added as an option “very soon,” Bolen said.

The XT2 XFR has started shipping in U.S., Canada, France, Spain, the U.K., Germany and Italy, Bolen said. Dell did not immediately comment on worldwide availability.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 15, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Acer overtook Dell as the world’s second-largest computer vendor during the third quarter, as the PC market showed signs of coming back to life, IDC said on Wednesday.

Global PC shipments grew 2.3% from the same quarter a year earlier, to 78.1 million units. It was the first quarter this year in which PC shipments have grown, IDC said.

Acer’s shipments grew by a whopping 25.6% to reach 10.96 million units, outpacing Dell, whose shipments declined 8.4% to 9.95 million units. Acer “outperformed the market in virtually all regions,” IDC said.

Acer benefited from strong shipments during the back-to-school season, as prices for laptops fell and netbook shipments gained momentum, said Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.

Dell has not embraced low-cost netbooks as enthusiastically as Acer, Chou said. Acer benefitted more from the competitive pricing environment for laptops and netbooks.

Acer ended the quarter with 14% of the market, compared to Dell’s 12.7%. Both companies trailed Hewlett-Packard, which retained its spot as the world’s top PC vendor. HP held 20.2% of the market after shipping 15.79 million PCs, a year-over-year growth rate of 9.3%.

HP is stronger in retail sales than Dell, which helped it generate stronger back-to-school sales.

Dell is stronger in sales to businesses, and it could rebound during a corporate PC refresh cycle that could happen in 2010, Chou said. Until then, Dell may struggle to keep up with competitors in unit shipments. The company saw solid growth in emerging markets, IDC noted, which was a positive sign.

Ever since Dell lost its market share lead, founder and CEO Michael Dell has insisted he is more concerned with profits. “If we wanted [market share], we’d go and sell a whole bunch of netbooks,” he said in a recent earnings call. Netbooks carry lower profit margins than full-fledged PCs.

Lenovo recorded strong growth of 18.2%, giving it the fourth-place spot with PC shipments of 6.99 million. Toshiba was fifth, with shipments growing 6.9% to 4.04 million.

“The continued strength of both the U.S. and worldwide PC business in the face of difficult economic environments underscores the value that both consumer and corporate buyers place on PCs,” Bob O’Donnell, vice president for clients and displays at IDC, said in a statement.

PC shipments in the U.S. grew by 2.5% during the third quarter, while shipments in Asia-Pacific “grew nicely,” IDC said. Shipments in Japan declined by a double-digit%age as consumer and corporate spending remained weak. Shipments also declined in EMEA, IDC said.

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