BIOS: Technology Means Business

nVidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) today unveiled a new line of professional graphics solutions: nVidia Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 5600, and nVidia Quadro Plex VCS Model IV. Armed with the largest increase in GPU power and functionality to date, these solutions are designed to help solve the world’s most complex professional graphics challenges.

“Today’s cutting-edge gaming and film experiences are built around tremendous 3D imagery. Designing this content requires high quality real-time feedback regardless of complexity,” said Bill Roberts, director of product management at Softimage Co. “nVidia’s support of shader Model 4.0 combined with the real-time shader architecture of SOFTIMAGE|XSI allows game developers to quickly create advanced visual effects for the Microsoft Vista OS by providing the most accurate visual feedback. Also the massively scalable visual compute power provided by CUDA is what fuels modern software architectures like SOFTIMAGE|XSI and Face Robot, built on our unique Gigapolygon core, which are inherently designed to take advantage of parallel computing power.”

Additional features in the new Quadro solutions include faster 3D texturing and massive 8Kx8K texture processing for better performance when zooming and panning of high-resolution images; nVidia SLI technology for improved graphics performance; dual dual-link display connectivity; and nVidia PureVideo technology for outstanding picture clarity, smooth video playback, and accurate colour and precise image scaling for SD and HD content. nVidia GSync and HD SDI options are also offered.

“We bundle nVidia Quadro solutions with our kernel technology to accelerate simulations in the electromagnetic and energy markets,” says Ryan Schneider, CTO for Acceleware Corp. “The CUDA SDK exposes an exciting new compute model that will help Acceleware to continue to make our products faster each year. This will also help our customers, including major cell phone and medical device designers, get their products to market faster, better and stronger.” nVidia Quadro solutions are widely available through leading OEMs such as HP, Dell, IBM, and Sun; leading workstation system integrators; and NVIDIA channel partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadtek (APAC) and Elsa (Japan).

Samsung Ships The World’s First Hybrid Hard Drive: Samsung Electronics today announced the shipment of its hybrid hard drive to the commercial marketplace. Samsung’s MH80 Series hybrid hard drive is offered in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities. Samsung is a leader in hybrid hard drive technology and is one of the first companies to offer a commercially available unit. The MH80 hybrid hard drive is currently shipping to select OEM customers and will soon be available in retail and commercial outlets.

Optimized to work in conjunction with Windows Vista capable notebook PCs, Samsung’s MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128- or 256MB of flash memory. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft’s ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology. “As a leader in both hard drive and flash memory technologies, Samsung brings to market a unique hybrid hard drive that is sure to revolutionise the notebook computing experience,” states Tae Jik Lee, vice president of sales and marketing team at Samsung Electronics’ Storage Division. “The MH80 hybrid hard drive provides the ideal solution for two major issues that notebook PC users continually face: faster boot and resume performance and extended battery life.”

The MH80 hybrid hard drive preserves the high densities of magnetic storage technology, while the advanced NAND flash technology enhances the overall value with lowered power consumption, higher reliability and faster read/write access than traditional hard drives. The MH80 features Samsung’s ReadyBoot technology that offers up to a 50% reduction in boot and resume times from traditional magnetic media technology. In addition, the drive consumes 70- to 90% less power than a traditional hard drive, which extends the battery life by 30 minutes before a recharge is needed.

The MH80 also offers up to five times the reliability of traditional notebook PC hard drives. As the drive’s platters are idle 99% of the time, the MH80 eliminates the need for the hard disk to constantly spin whenever a computer is operating on battery power. As a result, the drive is much less susceptible to shock damage, resulting in less data loss and fewer needed repairs. Furthermore, the drive operates at a lower temperature than a regular hard drive, reducing the likelihood of damage and hard drive failure.

Save Time, Money And Space With Dell’s Latest Mono Laser Printers: High performance laser printing for home and small businesses becomes even more accessible today, with the announcement of two new monochrome laser printers from Dell, the Dell Laser Printer 1720 and Dell Laser Printer 1720dn. These compact and robust A4 monochrome printers, offering exceptional price performance and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits, are available in Europe, Middle East and Africa from 6 March 2007 priced at £119 and £169 respectively, excluding VAT and delivery.

Perfect for use within a medium sized departmental workgroup or small business environment, the Dell Laser Printer 1720dn includes integrated networking and duplex printing (print both sides) as standard. Environmental considerations are fast becoming as important to small businesses as they are to large multinational corporations: duplex printing enables businesses to save money on paper costs, whilst using less paper both lessens environmental impacts and reduces document bulk. Through the Dell Recycling programme, Dell printer customers receive free pick-up and recycling of their old printer, regardless of the manufacturer. This programme covers most Western European countries. Dell also offers free recycling of used printer toner cartridges in most Western European countries.

“Home and business customers alike continue to look for both high-performance and high-quality output from today’s business laser printer products. At the same time they expect a printer that continues to deliver real print budget benefits, today and tomorrow,” said Michael Buck, Director of Software and Peripherals for Dell EMEA. “The new 1720 and 1720dn laser printers continue the high performance/low price standards set by their predecessor products, the award-winning Dell Laser Printer 1710 series. We are confident that our customers will be delighted with the feature and performance improvements in the new models. Dell continues to drive down print costs to the benefit of our customers.”

Suited to any size of office or home thanks to its compact footprint, the Dell Laser Printer 1720 is ideal for fast personal printing in small or home offices. The two new models build upon Dell’s highly successful 1710/1710n series of laser printers offering even faster performance with print speeds of up to 28 A4 pages per minute and a robust duty cycle of up to 25,000 pages per month. Nothing is less productive than standing at a printer waiting for a document to print. New to the Dell Laser 1720 and 1720dn is Dell’s Instant Warm-Up feature which ensures the printer is always ready to print, reducing the time to first print to as little as 7.5 seconds, even from energy-efficient ‘sleep mode’ (which uses just 2% of the power required for ‘print’ mode).

All Dell laser printers feature the Dell Toner Management System that automatically monitors toner and consumables levels and enables easy supplies ordering via a quick and easy online or telephone-based process. All networked laser printers including the new 1720dn printer also include Dell Printer Configuration Web Tool for quick setup, installation and configuration. The Dell Laser Printer 1720/1720dn are available with user documentation in the following languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Turkish and Greek.

The Dell Laser Printer 1720/1720dn will be available in the following countries from 6 March 2006: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Outside Western Europe: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Turkey, South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Survey Reveals Data Integration Projects Increasing, But Manual Processes Still Dominate: Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS) has announced the results of a study it commissioned from Forrester Consulting revealing data integration efforts are increasing across most major industries as a result of the demand for real-time globally accessible data. According to findings, information technology (IT) professionals are severely challenged in keeping pace - still mired in manual processes and ad hoc fixes.

The survey of 407 senior IT decision makers at companies with more than $250 million in annual revenues found that manual efforts remain the dominant approach for integration of data silos. 87% of respondents rely on newly developed code to integrate data, while 80% still manually change schemas as required. According to the findings, while these percentages will slightly decrease over the next two years, manual processes will continue to trump automation.

“It comes as no surprise that integration remains a significant challenge to IT,” said Hub Vandervoort, CTO, Enterprise Infrastructure Division, Progress Software Corporation. “What is a surprise, however, is IT’s approach to trying to solve these challenges through manual and ad hoc processes. These results are a clear call to action for the vendor community to provide minimally invasive and easy-to-use tools while providing support for data federation without the need for extensive schema changes.”

55% of respondents reported that they had undertaken four or more integration efforts over the past two years, and the majority of respondents didn’t see this number decreasing in the near future. 48% of those surveyed predicted that the number of integration efforts will increase during the next two years, while 41% said it will stay the same. The survey results identified service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a growing solution across enterprises to achieve successful end-to-end data management and integration results.

Although popular, manual approaches have some significant drawbacks according to the respondents. Among those who write code for each integration effort, 75% reported increased maintenance costs due to application complexity and 71% suffered from increased cycle time to integrate new applications. And 71% of respondents who rely on schema changes to support new applications said that one of their challenges is slow response to required application changes. Nearly two-thirds (66% ) reported problems with unforeseen breakage of other applications dependent on the same data.

“It comes as no surprise that integration remains a significant challenge to IT,” said Hub Vandervoort, CTO, Enterprise Infrastructure Division, Progress Software Corporation. “What is a surprise, however, is IT’s approach to trying to solve these challenges through manual and ad hoc processes. These results are a clear call to action for the vendor community to provide minimally invasive and easy-to-use tools while providing support for data federation without the need for extensive schema changes.”

The survey also found that an SOA-based approach is gaining ground quickly; while 44% of enterprises use SOA today, 59% of respondents reported that they plan to use SOA for integration efforts over the next two years. “With evidence that yesterday’s integration solutions are all still well represented (e.g. EAI, ETL, MDM and Data Hubs) it’s clear that the need to manage data integration in a heterogeneous setting is helping to drive SOA adoption,” continued Vandervoort.

The study also revealed that 32 of 53 finance and insurance companies responding to the survey, as well as 13 of the 33 utility companies, and 20 of the 43 public sector are using SOA today as the basis for application and data integration. Although the media entertainment and leisure sectors lag in adopting SOA today, with 10 of 29 respondents reporting use of SOA, by 2009 usage will spike with a total of 17 of 28 media entertainment and leisure respondents planning to use SOA. For a more in depth look at the results, download Addressing Data Integration Challenges with SOA here.

Be Customers Enjoy Average Download Speeds 127% Higher Than Closest Competitors: O2 announced today that Be, its wholly-owned broadband unit and one of the most innovative and technically-advanced UK broadband networks, has triumphed in an independent speed test round-up. Thinkbroadband.com found that, on average, Be customers were enjoying speeds 127% higher than those of their closest competitor.

One customer who lives 443 metres from his exchange is enjoying a broadband connection speed of 24.573 meg, the fastest available. Graham Wilson from Wishaw in North Lanarkshire said: ‘Speeds are phenomenal, from a good download location speeds between 22- and 24MB are easily obtainable, Pings to gaming servers are low and this helps give me the winning edge over competitors.’

Since launching and first breaking the speed record in September 2005, over 49% of Be members have a connection speed higher than 12 meg, more than five times the average UK download speed recorded in the Thinkbroadband.com speed test round-up. 25% of Be members enjoy speeds of over 16MB and across the entire membership the average upload speed is 1.125MB.

‘This means the UK is one of the fastest places in Europe for broadband and demonstrates how advanced the Be network has become.’ said Dana Pressman, Managing Director of Be Unlimited. ‘Since launching in 2005 we have focused on our goal: to provide the best possible broadband products that technology will allow.’ Be recently launched Annex M as standard for Be Office users. Annex M increases the upload speed to a potential 2.5MB. The upload speed record for a member using Annex M is 2.49MB.

Be was the first internet service provider to adopt the ADSL2+ technology. Depending on distance and quality of the copper line from the telephone exchange and other environmental factors ADSL2+ can provide speeds of up to 24MB. Since launching, Be has pushed the technological boundaries and provided members with simple, cheap, reliable internet access at the fastest speeds the UK infrastructure can deliver. To join the broadband revolution, customers simply need a BT telephone line that is connected to an exchange in which Be has installed their ADSL2+ equipment. Be’s broadband service starts at £14 per month, and includes a free wireless Be Box modem. To order Be’s 24 meg broadband, and check availability, go to www.BeThere.co.uk.

AppGate Sets A New Standard To Secure Communications For Mobile Smart Phones: AppGate provides a true Mobile solution that enables users of mobile devices such as smart phones to securely access all resources inside an enterprise’s internal network. The ability to access the Intranet, synchronise calendars and download attachments in a secure way are among the features in the solution. Now to enhance the security AppGate has added functionality including Network Access Control, Client Command and automatic log-in for SMS-OTP services. The AppGate solution also provides the ability to control Internet surfing by steering all web traffic from the mobile phone through the AppGate Server.

According to AppGate’s CEO Göran Marby, "With this development AppGate has really set the standard for mobile phone security, adding functionality that is otherwise only seen in the PC world. Now for the first time smart phones can be used as they are meant to be without having to worry about security, and system administrators can control access and treat mobile phones just like any other device on the network."

With the AppGate solution it is possible to secure all types of communication between the smart phone and office. This makes it possible to connect to applications such as SAP, Citrix and other mobile applications in a fully secure way without the need for modifications of applications or “middleware”. With granular levels of access control it possible to connect a user to specific information, even down to certain web pages. The AppGate Mobile solution also supports jabber based Instant Messaging clients, providing a secure instant messaging system for mobile users ‘out of the box’.

The AppGate solution supports all modern smart phones including Nokia’s Series 60 3rd edition, Sony Ericsson UIQ 3-based phones and Windows Mobile 5 phones. The solution can be connected to existing Radius and LDAP systems and the user can authenticate using a two-factor authentication system.

New Web-Based Alerting Tool Tackles Phishing And Spam Problems Head-On: Elertz, a UK start-up, has pioneered an alternative method of Web-based broadcast communication in a bid to battle rising concerns over spam and phishing scams. Also called elertz, the free Web toolbar is an alerting system that provides a unique way for companies to communicate directly with their customers, only giving them the information they really want when they want it. Information is delivered to customers who have requested specific information from Web sites by the clever alerting system - a flashing red star - located in their desktop browser.

Latest figures reveal that around 95% of e-mail today is spam or phishing scams and more than 2500 new phishing sites are created each month. Businesses are finding it increasingly hard to communicate directly with customers as inboxes become congested with emails, and fears of security risks associated with phishing and malware increase.

Steve Morris, CEO of elertz, explains: “The only real way to prevent spam and social engineering techniques, such as phishing, is to use another broadcast communication channel that is not e-mail based. An alerting system such as elertz provides an anonymous service for the subscriber. The subscriber does not have to divulge personal information such as an email address. The subscriber is also in complete control of the communication channel. Elertz that have been set up can be deleted easily, ending any form of communication between publisher and end user.”

As if security concerns are not enough, customers are also facing an overwhelming amount of ‘information pollution’ from different sources, such as email, IM, voicemail, direct mail, faxes and others. Steve Morris, adds: “We’ve almost reached a stage of communication gridlock. Businesses are so focused on ‘pushing’ information to customers that often the key messages about the product or service are lost. When too much information is pushed out this can lead to information overload. Customers using the Internet for example should be allowed to ‘pull’ information themselves. Businesses using elertz will allow their customers to set up a quick and reliable alerting system which provides up-to-the-minute information as and when it’s updated. End users who are able to stay in control and manage information are more likely to respond positively to businesses providing important services or innovative new products.”

Elertz is more precise and quicker than other broadcast communication channels such as email or RSS feeds. E-mail newsletters sent out by companies are often sent out in batches and customers located towards the end of a batch can experience delays. Spam filters often block such e-mail notifications altogether. RSS feeds can be useful for receiving general news updates but are only refreshed, on average, every 30 minutes, whereas Web sites using elertz are updated every 30 seconds! This means customers are alerted to specifically requested information immediately as changes occur. Unlike RSS feeds, elertz also incorporates an offline capability, allowing customers to sign up for SMS alerts when not in front of a computer.

VMware Advances Enterprise Desktop Management: VMware today announced the public beta of VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition. VMware ACE is a breakthrough product that enables IT desktop managers to create a standard PC environment including operating system, data and applications, wrap it with IT policies to protect the contents, package it into a virtual machine and deploy it to any managed or unmanaged PC endpoint.

The second generation of VMware ACE is designed to deliver the only controlled and easily managed enterprise-class virtualisation product for deploying desktops to any PC, providing a rich virtual desktop environment to end users while maintaining the control required by the governing IT organisation.

"IT administrators need tighter desktop control and management because they are tasked with supporting increasing numbers of workers who use equipment over which they have no control," said Jerry Chen, director of enterprise desktop platforms and solutions at VMware. "VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition offers the best of both worlds - IT administrators can easily manage thousands of users while effectively upholding corporate IT policies, and the end user can be productive with a desktop that has the identical look and feel of an IT-owned PC. It's like handing out a secure, controlled laptop without the cost and hassle of provisioning new hardware."

VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition public beta includes a new desktop mobility feature, Pocket ACE, which enables deployment of a full-featured desktop virtual machine to a portable media device such as a USB flash drive, portable hard drive or Apple iPod. End users can load a secure desktop onto the media device, plug it into a licensed PC or laptop and access the desktop from nearly anywhere with network connectivity.

The product also features the newly introduced VMware ACE Management Server, which allows IT administrators to centrally track and manage thousands of VMware ACE desktops and apply standard policies to them from a single console. As the first production-ready VMware virtual appliance, the VMware ACE Management Server is available pre-installed, pre-configured and ready to deploy. In addition, VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition public beta utilises the latest VMware virtualisation platform, enabling IT administrators to use VMware Workstation 6 to create and securely package VMware ACE virtual machines for deployment to end users who then can run them on any licensed PC or laptop.

"We have hundreds of laptops with different versions of hardware and software that are costing us huge dollars to upgrade and then certify with Health Canada each time we make hardware or software changes in order to adhere to Canadian healthcare regulations," said David Zavitske, IT technical support analyst in workstation management for Canadian Blood Services. "With VMware ACE, we're moving to certifying applications on hardware-independent virtual machines to streamline the regulatory compliance while ensuring application functionality, as well as enabling rapid deployment of these laptops for our mobile blood donation vehicles using USB keys with pre-loaded desktop configurations via the Pocket ACE feature."

"With VMware ACE, my IT team can build an image that has just enough functionality to get the job done, but blocks any unnecessary functionality that would only open that machine up to trouble," said Michel Labelle, network and terminal support manager for TSI. "For example, they can disable USB support so data can't be pulled off with a USB keychain, or Web browsing so the trainee can't go and download a virus by mistake."

Supporting users on unmanaged hardware can require IT administrators to create, test, provision and migrate a separate desktop image for every flavor of PC hardware being supported. Administrators now can create standard desktop images using VMware Workstation 6, then deploy and manage them with the VMware ACE Management Server. This results in the ability to easily manage numerous virtual machines while reducing the number of images to create and enabling faster desktop deployments.

A single management interface provides centralised policy management of desktop virtual machines deployed on existing PCs. The VMware ACE Management Server supports dynamic updates of IT policies and manages virtual machine expiration dates, device and network access configurations and activation or deactivation of VMware ACE clients at any time.

IT administrators can create secure and isolated VMware ACE desktop environments for use on existing PCs that are separate from the user's personal settings. This allows administrators to manage and control the VMware ACE desktop without infringing on the user's freedom to utilise PC features that might be restricted within the VMware ACE environment. IT administrators can take snapshots of stable virtual machine configurations and roll back to the previous state quickly and easily.

In addition to support for Windows Vista, VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition public beta offers Linux host operating system support for Mandriva, Novell, Red Hat and Ubuntu. VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition public beta leverages the latest virtualisation platform from VMware, including support for USB 2.0, and supports virtual machines of up to 8GB in size. VMware ACE 2 Enterprise edition is currently in public beta for Linux and Windows users and is available for download at www.vmware.com/products/beta/ace/. The product is expected to be generally available in the second quarter of 2007. Pricing will be announced at the time of general availability.

Perforce Software Adds New Administration Tool To Its Award Winning Software Configuration Management System: Perforce Software today released version 2007.1 of its Fast Software Configuration Management System. Topping the list of new features is the graphical administration tool that allows Perforce administrators to manage permissions for individuals as well as teams of developers. Perforce administrators now have dynamic control over inherited permissions and related dependencies in the repository.

Perforce SCM versions and manages source code and digital assets for enterprises large and small. The administration tool is part of the Perforce Visual Client, P4V, which is the cross-platform graphical user interface available on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.

“Our enterprise customers have been urging us to add visual administration features to keep pace with the demands of managing large worldwide installations,” explained Christopher Seiwald, president and chief technology officer of Perforce Software. “While our 50 to 100-user shops require near-zero administration, our larger customers with 3,000 to 5,000 users wanted a more interactive interface for their system administrators. This is the first step in meeting that need and our customers can expect more visual administrative support in the future.”

Administrators can now quickly and easily: create or modify users and groups; visually manage permissions for users and groups with drag-and-drop functionality; create new users and groups from administrator-defined templates; and monitor license availability. In addition, P4V includes enhanced support for working offline. A new ‘Reconcile Offline Work’ feature helps developers to more effectively reconcile modifications to files after working disconnected from the Perforce Server.

Perforce version 2007.1 is available now. Interested developers are invited to download and evaluate Perforce free from the Perforce Web site without obligation for a 45-day trial. This offer includes free technical support during the evaluation period. A free, fully functional, two-user version is also available from the Web site. End-user licenses, including one year of support and maintenance, start at $800 per seat; volume discounts are available. For additional price and license information, visit www.perforce.com.

Tao Group Announces Launch Of Intent Gameplayer ADK: Tao Group, author of the intent GamePlayer platform, will launch intent GamePlayer ADK (Application Development Kit) at Game Developer Conference 2007 in San Francisco. The ADK enables game developers rapid development of their code and deployment across all of the industry’s major CPU architectures devices and market sectors, uniquely addressing the issue of fragmentation and offering immediate portability. Intent GamePlayer provides the only available method of delivering a single binary ubiquitously right across the industry’s architectures enabling game applications to run at native speed across different platforms, irrespective of the hardware and across both open and closed operating systems.

Using an array of transformational patented processes, Tao Group's intent GamePlayer provides binary portability over the broad swathe of CPU and graphics accelerator types and across a variety of platforms beyond handsets including set-top boxes, televisions, automotive and PCs, and a provisioning mechanism to allow native content to be efficiently downloaded, installed and launched.

Francis Charig, Chief Executive Tao Group, comments, “With the increasing problem of convergence across the market there is a greater need than ever for genuine binary portability to reduce the issue of fragmentation. Binary portability is an over-used term and its meaning has become much misconstrued. Binary portability does not apply to multiple applications being ported across different operating environments if only one chip set is targeted.”

Charig continues, “A number of companies claim to have binary portability offering up to 60 percent cost savings for development and porting but this only applies to a subset of the industry, for example, smart phones. Tao Group is unique in the market because it offers single binary portability across different architectures and chip sets and can address the closed phone market place that offers so much potential but is largely untapped. Tao Group offers genuine cross-industry portability that spans feature phones as well as smart phones, set-top boxes, PC and other gaming platforms.”

Charig concludes, “Reducing cross-industry fragmentation to enable lower development costs and faster, and therefore cheaper, deployment of native content is necessary to generate the full revenue potential of the new generation of mobile devices. The intent GamePlayer ADK is the only Application Developer Kit which can ensure ubiquity and performance.”