LITHIUM POLYMER TO POWER NEXT SONY NOTEBOOKS

Following the massive battery recalls announced by Apple and Dell recently, Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said last he believes notebook makers will likely soon incorporate lithium polymer battery technology instead of the currently used lithium ion.

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Network Appliance Completes Acquisition of Topio

NetApp has completed the acquisition of Topio, a privately held Santa Clara, California–based company with R&D in Haifa, Israel. Under the terms of the definitive agreement announced November 8, 2006, Network Appliance acquired Topio for approximately USD 160 million in an all-cash transaction.

According to the statement by the company, NetApp intends to add heterogeneous replication capabilities to its disk-to-disk backup products, including the NearStore Virtual Tape Library (VTL), Open Systems SnapVault for remote office backup and SnapVault for NetBackup, a product jointly engineered with Symantec.

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IBM and Infosys’ Benchmark For Core Banking Transaction Processing

IBM and Infosys have made known results of a performance benchmark for Infosys' Finacle Core Banking Solution running on IBM's System p Servers that far outperform all such published benchmarks by a wide margin, as per a statement issued by the companies.

In the recent scalability benchmark, reviewed by Ernst & Young, Finacle on IBM System p servers surpassed its own previous record as the most scalable core banking solution in the world. The Finacle on IBM System p benchmark performed on a base of over 52 million accounts, delivering a transaction throughput on delivery channels Effective Transactions Per Second (ETPS) beating its own previous best of 11,180 ETPS. The new delivery channels transaction processing benchmark translates to a business transaction throughput of 19,288 business Transactions Per Second (TPS)

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WebMethods Named IT Supplier of the Year, Woolworths

webMethods, a business integration and optimisation software company, was named IT Supplier of the Year in the enabling software category by Woolworths Limited, Australia’s largest retailer.

Critical mandates for Woolworths’ supply chain included the ability to rapidly integrate new acquisitions as well as the need to streamline business processes and enhance visibility with key partners while reducing operational latency and transaction costs. By leveraging webMethods Fabric as its integration standard, the company has been able to improve its performance across each of these criteria, the company claimed.

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Document Format Wars Get Dirty

Microsoft’s Office Open XML file format won approval from the Ecma International standards body in the last week of November 2006, giving it needed credibility as a rival to the OpenDocument format.

IBM was the lone dissenter in the vote on December 7 that approved Microsoft's Open XML document format as an Ecma standard.

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Google Launches Radio Ads Service

Google wants to spread its reach beyond the Internet with a new move venturing into the radio advertising service. The concept of radio advertising was driven into Google post acquiring dMarc Broadcasting, a small radio advertising firm, for USD 102 million in cash last January.

"We're happy to announce that the integration is now complete and we've recently begun a U.S. beta test of Google Audio Ads with a small group of AdWords advertisers," Google said in a statement on its official advertising blog.

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Motorola Makes Equity Investment in Mobile Complete

Motorola, through Motorola Ventures, its venture capital arm, has made an equity investment in Mobile Complete. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Motorola Ventures led the investment in Mobile Complete as part of a Series B Financing, along with participation from a previous investor, Innovacom VC.

Founded in 2003, Mobile Complete develops, test and deploys mobile applications and services. The company launched DeviceAnywhere.com in December 2005 to help content providers address the issue of handset proliferation by accessing real mobile devices over the Internet at any time, from any location. This rapidly growing service has been deployed across ten carrier networks and five locations, including the US, Canada, and the UK.

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Software AG Opens Office in Japan

Software AG has opened its office in Tokyo, Japan. This is another step in the implementation of Software AG’s growth strategy. The new office will directly serve the company’s established Japanese customer base of over two hundred enterprises. The company introduced its plans for fully localised product and support services while launching the centre. The Japanese market is expected to contribute in the range of 15 euros-20 million euros per annum to group revenue with profits in line with group average.

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ASTRON, IBM Team to Research Origins of the Universe

ASTRON, an astronomy research organisations, has a collaborative agreement with IBM up its sleeve. The venture aims to focus on the design, engineering and manufacturing of customised, high performance analog and mixed signal processing chips. The high performance, low power usage customised chips will be used in antennas as part of ASTRON's project to build a new prototype radio telescope called SKADS/EMBRACE, which will be the precursor for the radio astronomy telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

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RPC Fights Sun, StorageTek for Copyright Infringement

Netbula, LLC, a software company specialising in Internet development tools, has filed a lawsuit against Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek), Sun Microsystems and DOES 1-100. The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland, alleges that SUN and StorageTek infringed Netbula's Copyrights.

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Oracle Increases Bid for India's i-flex

Oracle has increased the offer for its Indian subsidiary, i-flex Solutions, to Rs 2,100 (USD 47.14) per share representing a 42 per cent premium to the Rs1,475 which was offered earlier.

Oarcle said it was its final offer. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison said, "There will not be another open offer and Oracle will not undertake a delisting for at least the next five years unless i-flex shares are selling at a significantly lower price than they are today. This is the last opportunity for i-flex shareholders to tender their shares to Oracle."

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INFOMATICA EXPANDS OPERATIONS IN APAC, APPOINTS THREE EXECUTIVES

Informatica Corporation, a provider of data integration software, has appointed Joel G. Momberger as Managing Director for Asia Pacific, Bernard Gan as Regional Manager, Asia Pacific and Sid Lasley as Technical Director, Asia Pacific. "With the continuing effects of globalisation and outsourcing, data integration has never been more important", said Sohaib Abbasi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Informatica Corporation.

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DAN SCHEINMAN TO HEAD CISCO MEDIA GROUP

Cisco has appointed Dan Scheinman to lead the newly formed Cisco Media Solutions Group that will be responsible for developing and marketing infrastructure products. Scheinman – till recently was senior vice president of Corporate Development at Cisco— will be senior vice president and general manager of this new organisation and reporting directly to John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco.

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YAHOO PLAYS MUSICAL CHAIRS WITH REORGANISATION, DAN ROSENSWEIG STEPS DOWN

Yahoo’s memo called the Peanut Butter Manifesto is making inroads into the company as a major reorganisation is in full swing. The document contained confidential material that talked about how the company plans to trim its staff by one fifth. Yahoo senior vice president Brad Garlinghouse wrote the memo. In wake of the reorganisation efforts, Yahoo’s COO Dan Rosensweig and Lloyd Braun, a former ABC television executive who ran Yahoo!’s media operation, have resigned. Susan Decker, the chief financial officer, has been stepped up as the manager of advertising sales at the company.

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FLEXCUBE Leads Retail Banking Vendors, Says Forrester

i-flex, a provider of IT solutions, has said that i-flex was among the select companies that Forrester Research invited to participate in its November 2006 Forrester wave report, 'The Forrester Wave: Retail Banking Platforms, Q4 2006'. According to the report, i-flex’s FLEXCUBE scored 4.29 the highest for its current offering out of a possible score of five. Weightages were given to parameters such as functional depth and breadth, multi- channel enablement, platform agility and architecture and development.

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BEA AND HUAWEI PARTNER TO DELIVER SOLUTIONS FOR IMS PROVIDERS

Despite widespread views to the contrary, enterprise businesses will likely become a hot market for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services, reports In-Stat. BEA, a maker of enterprise and communications infrastructure software, and Huawei, Chinese Telecom equipment company have decided to partner inorder to to facilitate the adoption of IMS communication services like voiceSMS, voice-mail, and videomail. The partnership is aimed at a two-year stint where the companies plan to integrate the Intervoice Media Exchange Enhanced Services Platform together withBEA Systems—BEA WebLogic SIP Server. The integration will, according to a news release, "offer an IMS network and service layer solution for communications service providers that reduces the cost of development, operation and time to market for next generation services."

Read More on:Despite widespread views to the contrary, enterprise businesses will likely become a hot market for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services, reports In-Stat. BEA, a maker of enterprise and communications infrastructure software, and Huawei, Chinese Telecom equipment company have decided to partner inorder to to facilitate the adoption of IMS communication services like voiceSMS, voice-mail, and videomail. The partnership is aimed at a two-year stint where the companies plan to integrate the Intervoice Media Exchange Enhanced Services Platform together withBEA Systems—BEA WebLogic SIP Server. The integration will, according to a news release, "offer an IMS network and service layer solution for communications service providers that reduces the cost of development, operation and time to market for next generation services."

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Nokia Bags Eastern Telecom VoIP Deal, Deploys NGN

Easten Telecom has signed a contract with Nokia to strengthen its presence in the Philippines. The financial details of the deal were not revealed, however, Nokia made known the other nuances of the contract.

Under the terms of the deal, the deployment of a Next Generation Network (NGN) core is part of their network modernisation initiative. Nokia said it would renew Eastern Telecom's fixed network with a VoIP-capable NGN and fixed/broadband access system. The contract includes the Nokia MSC Server System (MSS)—the mobile softswitch, along with the Nokia VoIP Server, enabling personalised voice telephony.

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MCAFEE ACQUIRES CITADEL ASSETS

McAfee has completed the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Citadel Security Software, a provider of security solutions. The deal was for USD 60 million. The acquisition of Citadel is a key component of McAfee's security risk management strategy, which allows customers to turn policy into action by automatically enforcing compliance, McAfee said in a statement.

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Business Objects Acquires Nsite

Business Objects, a provider of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, has acquired Nsite Software, a California-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. The acquisition gives Business Objects access to Nsite’s on-demand application platform, engineering talent experienced in building and managing SaaS offerings, and approximately 27,000 current Nsite subscribers, as per a statement issued by the company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

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e4e and Datacom Enter Into Partnership, Address Customer Needs

e4e, a provider of business services, and Datacom, an IT services provider in Australasia, have formed a partnership to serve the needs of global customers within Asia-Pacific.The partnership aims to address a wide array of customer needs in the areas of customer and technical support and help faster customer deployment.

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Motorola HotZone Duo Selected by CERNET Across China

China Education and Research Network (CERNET) has selected Motorola’s HotZone Duo solution to provide public access for its campuses. These universities were selected as part of the pilot for CERNET’s campus Wi-Fi initiative. CERNET performed technical testing to certify that HotZone Duo provides the support for the new IPv6 protocol, ensuring that it meets or exceeds the requirements for China's Next Generation Internet (CNGI) project.

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MIXED REACTIONS FOLLOW VISTA LAUNCH

Microsoft, which released Vista, its newest operating system in five years, last week, claims the product is a game changing one and will eventually make it a great operating system

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Ericsson bags A.T. Kearney Award

Ericsson has won the A.T. Kearney's global award for Best Organic Growth 2006, based upon the growth and strategies of its business unit Global Services, the company said in a statement. A.T. Kearney is a management consultancy company. The award is based on A.T. Kearney's Global Growth Excellence Survey.

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Nortel, SECI in SouthEast Europe JV

Nortel and Southeast European Communications and Investments (SECI) have decided to establish a Joint Venture (JV) in southeast Europe. The creation of the JV with SECI, a company that is involved with providing advisory services in telecommunications, energy and various infrastructure projects in southeast Europe will allow Nortel to reach this rapidly growing regional market, as per a statement issued by the company.

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Infosys Finacle Emerges as Top Banking Software: Study

Finacle, the banking software product from one of India’s lagest IT services companies- Infosys has been ranked as the top banking software, ahead of FlexCube from iFlex. In the Forrester Wave report, 'Retail Banking Platforms Q4 2006 released November 2006 Finacle emerged top. In this study, comparing the retail banking platform market, Forrester evaluated five global retail banking platform vendors. These vendors were short-listed through a rigorous multi-criteria selection process that included an in-depth appraisal of their coverage of the Forrester banking functions map, forward-looking architectural approach, success in 2005, global delivery capability and platform commitment.

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Somerfield Hires TCS for IT management

One of India’s biggest software exporters, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has signed a seven year agreement to provide a full range of managed IT services to Somerfield, a UK-based small-format food retailer, building on an existing eight-year relationship between TCS and Somerfield.

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Nortel Opens Asia Network Management Centre in India

Nortel has opened a new customer network management centre in Indian capital New Delhi. Nortel's Asia Network Management Centre joins similar facilities in London and Raleigh, N.C. to provide network management, technology transformation and hosted application services for multi-vendor, multi-technology telecommunications networks serving both local andmulti-national companies, as per a prepared company release.

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GROWING SME’S HELP ASIAN VSAT MARKET, SAYS FROST &SULLIVAN

The APAC Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) market is firmly in its growth stage, and has come to represent the new battleground for global VSAT players who are faced with declining growth in other regional markets. VSAT services are beginning to gain greater acceptance among the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) and Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) segments, as per a report by Frost & Sullivan.

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Yahoo Rebuffs Google on Digital Books

Troubled waters run deep as Google is faced with a string of copyright infringement suits. Google believes it can defend its plans to provide online access to millions of library books by obtaining more details about similar projects involving some of its biggest rivals. But Yahoo has rebuffed Google's attempt to learn more about its efforts to create digital copies of books. Amazon-dot-com took a similar stance against Google as well.

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Blue Coat Breaks Attendance Records for APAC Partner Conference

Blue Coat, a content and application delivery company has said that its sales and training conference for its top-level channel partners in Asia Pacific (APAC) has grown 40 per cent over last year and 100per cent since 2004.

The Blue Coat 2006 APAC Partners Conference will be held for two full days on November 29 and 30. Attendees will include distributors, resellers and global systems integrators from across the APAC region. As with the recent Blue Coat EMEA Partners Conference, this conference includes, for the first time, a special track designed for global systems integrators.

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