December 2009 Archives

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s innovative 60-day try-and-buy program, which invited users to select and evaluate products and solutions ranging from servers and workstations to storage units and networking cards--including full product warranty and technical support--is set to expire on Friday, December 18.

The try-and-buy program, which the vendor initiated some three years ago, primarily was aimed at IT managers, developers and channel partners interesting in examining Sun's products or looking for additional demo units for their customers.

The vendor urged customers to apply online for the free equipment and to try it on for size for a 60-day period. Users could opt to purchase gear they wanted and return the remainder within the accepted window of time with no charge.

Sun said it will accept applications through this Friday.

Hewlett-Packard Co. has appointed Ron Coughlin to senior vice president of the vendor's LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions global business unit housed in its Imaging and Printing group.

With the appointment, which HP said is effectively immediately, Coughlin will report to Vyomesh Joshi, IPG executive vice president.

Coughlin is tasked with leading teams responsible for HP's LaserJet business, the portfolio of which includes devices, supplies, software and solutions targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses, enterprise customers and consumers.

He joined HP more than two years ago as senior vice president of worldwide strategy and marketing for the IPG. Before joining HP, he was a senior vice president and chief marketing officer at PepsiCo. Coughlin is based in San Diego, CA.

He succeeds David Murphy, who is leaving HP to pursue other professional interests.

Avnet Technology Solutions said that Lisa Friesenhahn, the distributor's vice president of SMB solutions, has been presented a prestigious award from IBM Global Services for developing innovative approaches to improving the channel and fostering the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

Friesenhahn is only the second recipient of the IBM Global Services Marguerite Butterworth Lifetime Achievement award since its inception in 1997. Butterworth, an IBM vice president, developed processes to help grow the Global Services business into the channel.

"Throughout her career at Avnet, Lisa has dedicated herself to helping our suppliers and reseller business partners pursue new opportunities to accelerate their growth," said Jeff Bawol, Avnet president.

Friesenhahn has worked in technology channels for 23 years and is credited with leading projects-- such as developing an automated order processing system and constructing a program to help partners navigate the maze of solutions-based sales--to advance IBM's Global Services business in the channel.

Avnet said that Friesenhahn is a key factor driving its ranking as the top distributor selling IBM Global Services in eight out of the past 10 years.

Prior to her current position, Friesenhahn served as the distributor's vice president of leasing, services and remarketing sales.

"IBM Global Services Marguerite Butterworth Lifetime Achievement award is an incredibly rare honor reserved for executives who have played significant roles in transforming our channel and the way we conduct business," said Archie James, IBM Global Services director of channel services.

"Lisa has been instrumental in helping us shape our product and services strategy for the channel and she has been a driving force in creating programs that make it easier for our partners to do business and profitably target new market opportunities."

A study commissioned by Cisco Systems Inc., entitled Securing the Mobile Workforce, revealed that a majority of organizations may be unprepared to enable their remote and mobile workforce in the event of a disruption such as a natural disaster or a transportation failure.

The study, which was conducted by InsightExpress, a Stamford, CT-based researcher, consisted of interviews of 502 IT decision makers from all sizes of businesses in the health care, financial and retail industries, as well as the government and education sectors.

The survey's findings suggested that without the proper infrastructure to support remote work by a significant percentage of employees, many businesses risk not being able to conduct operations as usual should an event hinder people from going to work.

Research findings indicated that enabling a remote workforce is not a high priority for IT executives. Some 53 percent of those interviewed in the survey said that less than half of their employees were set up to work remotely and 21 percent said that none of their workers did so.

Slightly less than 40 percent said that their business did not dictate having to enable employees from remote locations. Moreover, only 22 percent felt confident that their current remote access solutions prepared them to continue operations in a disaster situation. Only a small percentage (15 percent) believed that disaster preparation was a sufficient reason to provide remote access to employees.

The study did point to the high value that IT executives placed on employee productivity and, of those that had adopted mobility and remote access, most (62 percent) said that it had resulted in higher productivity among their workers, with the associated benefits of boosting employee satisfaction and reducing overhead costs.

Cisco said the survey results varied somewhat by industry, with the health care and financial industries better prepared for disaster than the retail, education or government segments.

The vendor observed from the survey's results that companies perhaps are not sufficiently heeding the call to enable remote access solutions to prepare for unexpected business interruptions.

"IT departments should take note--secure remote access and business continuity go hand-in-hand," said Fred Kost, Cisco director of security solutions marketing.

"Technology that lets workers outside the office securely connect to the corporate network is a win for employees and employers. Preparing your network now in the event of unforeseen events is good business practice but as this survey shows, many enterprises today have a long way to go."

A research study commissioned by Fujitsu indicated that industry hype is turning CIOs away from the benefits of desktop virtualization and hampering moves toward a virtualized desktop infrastructure.

The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne, a U.K.-based researcher, consisted of interviews with 100 CIOs in private sector organizations in the U.K. featuring more than 1,000 desktops.

Some 49 percent of the survey participants said that desktop virtualization technologies promised more than they can deliver.

Among companies with 1,000 to 3,000 desktops, 60 percent said that desktop virtualization's hype exceeds its delivery. Larger organizations with more than 3,000 desktops were less critical of the technology, with only 38 percent questioning it.

In specific industries, manufacturing organizations (64 percent) are most skeptical about desktop virtualization when compared to more optimistic businesses in retail, financial services and other sectors.

Fujitsu officials noted that CIOs in the study seemed to dismiss the proven cost savings and energy efficiencies of server virtualization technologies when considering its impact on a hosted virtual desktop infrastructure. More than 75 percent have no plan to move to desktop virtualization.

"What's clear from the research is that the IT industry is doing its usual job of over-hyping the benefits of a technology without showing the real and tangible benefits it can bring," said Ian Bradbury, Fujitsu UK and Ireland solution design director.

"The industry has been talking about desktop virtualization in some form for over 15 years--from server-based computing to thin client and blade PCs. Our belief is that desktop virtualization is coming of age, with the next three years being the time CIOs will really challenge the way they manage and deliver their desktop environment."

Kaseya Corp., a supplier of automated systems management software, said it is offering IT service providers a free revenue and ROI calculator that assesses potential gains from implementing a managed services business model.

The calculator, which can be accessed here, determines the profit an IT service provider can generate by growing their managed services business, company officials said.

"We created our revenue calculator so IT service providers can see how they can scale almost instantly for rapid growth by delivering managed services through IT automation," said Dave Spector, Kaseya senior vice president of global marketing.

Kaseya, which competes with N-able and Level Platforms, is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, with offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

It sells IT automation software with a unified array of tools to monitor, manage and control IT assets remotely from one integrated, web-based platform.

A recent study by Evans Data Corp., a Santa Cruz, CA-based researcher, showed that only 8.7 percent of developers in North America currently are using a cloud service as a development environment, although an additional 18 percent plan to do so in the next year.

Survey results were based on interviews with 500 developers in North America. The study is part of a series Evans conducts worldwide twice yearly on topics such as language and platform use, web services and services-oriented architecture, cloud computing, high performance computing, and development tools and methodologies.

The research findings indicated that use of the Python scripting language by developers has increased by 45 percent in the last year and a half, a boost Evans attributed to Google's influence and cloud computing's potential.

Evans said that only about 13 percent of developers used Python before Google unveiled its App Engine in the Spring of 2008, which, at the time only supported Python, but that figure has risen to more than 20 percent now.

"Python has been around since 1989 but never had many users until recently," said Janel Garvin, Evans Data chief executive.

"This adoption change illustrates the power of Google and the promise of cloud computing on which Google's App Engine depends. As the computing landscape evolves with the cloud, so will the adoption of surrounding technologies, as we see here."

The study also revealed that Agile is the most commonly used programming model in use today in North America, and that corporate priority is the single most inhibiting factor in the adoption and implementation of service-oriented architecture.

Paragon Software Group, a maker of data security and storage management products for PCs, servers and networks, has brought to market a new backup solution for disaster recovery and system migration that supports both physical and virtual settings.

The solution, dubbed Drive Backup 10 Server Edition, is aimed at customers in the mid-sized business market. The package is priced at $499.

Tom Fedro, Paragon president, said that Paragon's channel partners will benefit from the new solution.

"Our resellers have been telling us that they need an affordable, all-inclusive solution for their larger corporate customers, and Drive Backup 10 Server Edition fits the bill perfectly," said Fedro.

The company expects the new product will expand the vendor's reach beyond its traditional focus on the SMB segment to larger businesses.

"Historically, Paragon Software has been very strong in the SMB space," Fedro said.

"The debut of Drive Backup 10 Server Edition takes us to the next level as our software can now scale to larger customers, with more advanced features and a lower price point than competing offerings."

The Drive Backup 10 Server Edition is intended to reduce recovery times and costs for migrating or deploying systems while providing IT managers with flexibility in managing system continuity.

The solution includes Paragon's Adaptive Restore, which allows users to migrate a Windows-based system to a different hardware platform, either physical or virtual. It also features expanded backup capabilities, improved remote management, a system boot corrector, the ability to create and manage custom scripts, virtual operations to preview tasks and a file transfer wizard.

Paragon said that the product simplifies migration to a virtual environment by creating a duplicate image of the live disk drives on servers or workstations, including the operating system, files, programs, updates and databases.