Itanium Solutions Guide News

HP Prepares New Integrity Servers for Tukwila Launch

2009-09-30T00:00:00-07:00

James Niccolai, IDG News Service

Hewlett-Packard will make some significant updates to its Integrity server line next year to coincide with the launch of Intel's first quad-core Itanium processor, known as Tukwila, an HP executive said.

HP won't provide details about the new systems yet, but one analyst said HP may introduce a modular, blade-like design for more of its Integrity systems, much as it did last year for the Integrity NonStop. That could help to make the systems more energy-efficient and reduce HP's manufacturing costs.

It will be a good time for HP to update the systems. Tukwila will not be socket-compatible with previous generations of Itanium, and HP customers won't be able to use the new chip in most existing Integrity systems, Lorraine Bartlett, a vice president with HP's Business Critical Systems division, said in an interview.

That means customers will have to buy a new server if they want to use the quad-core Itanium processor. HP will try to sweeten the transition to the new chip by using it as an occasion to "modernize" its Integrity hardware, Bartlett said.

The Integrity line competes with Sun Sparc and IBM Power systems and is targeted at applications that require a large memory footprint or high levels of uptime. HP is by far the biggest customer for Itanium, which it adopted to replace its own PA-RISC processor running HP-UX and other OSes.

The company is particularly keen to update its high-end SuperDome server, which has had the same enclosure since it was launched almost a decade ago, Bartlett said. The Tukwila launch "really is the opportunity for us to introduce a much more efficient, modern infrastructure for SuperDome," she said.

SuperDome is the largest Integrity system, scaling to 64 processors. The line also includes entry-class systems that scale to four processors and mid-range servers that scale to 16. Those systems today each have a different underlying hardware infrastructure.

"So what you'll find that we'll do in the next generation is a platform that can cover that entire space very cost-effectively and efficiently for customers. Today the servers are quite similar, but they are independent servers," Bartlett said.

She declined to elaborate, but Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said the launch of HP's Integrity Nonstop BladeSystem last year may offer a clue where the company is headed.

That move saw HP move its fault-tolerant NonStop technology onto its BladeSystem hardware. That means HP gets to use some of the same hardware that it uses for other, higher-volume blade products, which reduces its design and manufacturing costs. HP says the blade systems are also more energy-efficient and require less floor space.

"It wouldn't be a big stretch to assume that HP is taking at least a somewhat similar approach" with its other Integrity products, Haff said.

The strategy is similar to what Intel is doing with Tukwila, which will use some of the same chip-set components as Intel's higher-volume Nehalem EX Xeon processors, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. "The more commonality you have between products, the cheaper it is to make them," he said.

After several delays, Intel expects to launch Tukwila in the first quarter next year. HP will need about three months after that to get the chip into its servers, Bartlett said.

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64, said it's always more challenging to sell customers a forklift server upgrade, "but sometimes it becomes necessary, and that's been true over the years with systems from Sun and IBM and others."

IBM has said its Power7 chip, due in the first half of next year, will plug into some of its existing high-end servers. But previous updates required customers to buy new server systems.

HP says the upgrade will be worth it. With twice as many cores, Tukwila will allow HP to put the same compute capacity into a system half the size, Bartlett said. For example, a fully loaded SuperDome with 64 processors will occupy one server cabinet with Tukwila, whereas today it uses two.

One exception with the upgrade will be HP's Integrity blade servers: Customers will be able to put a Tukwila server into an existing Integrity blade enclosure, Bartlett said.

Moving forward, Intel has said Tukwila will be socket-compatible with the next two generations of Itanium, known as Poulson and Kittson.

Spanish team win �Itanium Innovation Alliance Awards 09�

2009-09-29T00:00:00-07:00

The CESGA-UNEX-UVIGO team has won in the Computationally Intensive Applications category of the “Itanium Innovation Alliance Awards 09”. This award is given by the Itanium Solutions Alliance in recognition of remarkable use of supercomputers equipped with Intel® Itanium processors. The awards were presented today in a ceremony held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Francisco, California.

These awards recognise, in three different categories, (“Mission-Critical Data”, “Data Center Modernization” and “Computationally Intensive Applications”), the excellence of high-performance computing jobs performed on Itanium-based systems. The criteria for the selection of jobs submitted from 14 countries and five continents are primarily based on the difficulty of the computational challenge presented, the results produced and originality of the proposal.

In particular, the category in which the team CESGA-UNEX-UVIGO has won “Computationally Intensive Applications” recognises organizations that have used their Itanium-based systems to cope with enormous and critical computing loads that require high performance consistent and scalable shared resources.

The jury composed of prominent members from the industry such as Dr. Barry Hief, Scientific Director of Global Patent Identifiers, Sverre Jarp, Chief Technology Officer of CERN Openlab, or Michelle Pierce, Product Manager of Microsoft's Mainframe Migration Alliance, (www.itaniumsolutions.org/itanium_innovation_awards/judges), considered CESGA worthy of the award for it use of Finis Terrae supercomputer in the analysis of massive electromagnetic computational problems, the largest with over 500 million unknowns, with multiple applications in the improvement of industrial design. CESGA used HP Integrity servers, equipped with 1.024 parallel Itanium processors and 6TB of memory to achieve this first-of-its-class solution, which was the ticket in winning this prestigious award.

The team is formed by researchers Fernado Obelleiro and José Luis Rodríguez from University of Vigo; Luis Landesa and José Manuel Taboada from University of Extremadura and Carlos Mouriño and Andrés Gómez from CESGA. They have worked in a coordinated way for years for, among others, the Spanish Army and Navantia® developing systems that allow to address electromagnetic compatibility studies, aiming to detect interference between antennas, predict dangerous levels of radiation, study its radar equivalent surface, etc.

The Supercomputing Centre of Galicia (CESGA) is a partnership between the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Xunta de Galicia. CESGA provides computing resources, high-performance communication and advanced services for the Galician Scientific Community, the University Academic System and CSIC. Its goal is to promote high-quality research in Computer Science, in close collaboration with the Galician research community, as well as with other regions or countries around the world, contributing to the advancement of science, technology transfer to the industry and governments, and consequently for the welfare of society as a whole.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware vendors, operating systems and applications, devoted to promoting the adoption and ongoing development of solutions based on Itanium processors.

Created in 2005, the Alliance works with some of the most influential companies in the computing industry that share a strategic commitment to providing computing solutions for critical services, based on the Intel ® Itanium ® architecture. Among members of the alliance are corporations the likes of Bull, Fujitsu, Siemens, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI, Supermicro, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, SAS and Sybase.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Names Winners of Innovation Awards at Gala Celebration

2009-09-23T00:00:00-07:00

Four category winners honored for innovative and impactful research and business solutions employing Itanium-based servers

San Francisco, Calif. – September 24 – The Itanium Solutions Alliance has announced the winners of its third annual Itanium Innovation Awards. Winners and finalists in the program’s four categories were honored for their groundbreaking projects using Intel® Itanium®-based servers with a celebratory event hosted by Kirk Skaugen of Intel and Joan Jacobs of the Alliance at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As judged by a distinguished panel of experts in information technology and innovation, the winners are:

Mission-Critical Data: Mobiltel
Mobiltel, Bulgaria’s leading telecommunications provider, faced significant subscriber growth, which seriously impacted the performance of its customer relationship management and billing applications. The winning project, managed by Simeon Dimitrov, saw Mobiltel migrate its infrastructure to an Itanium-based HP Integrity platform, running both HP-UX and Microsoft® Windows® Server, with significant gains in performance, customer service and scalability to accommodate its rapidly growing subscriber base. Mobiltel reports dramatic cost-of-ownership savings and improved time-to-market for new services from its Itanium-based solution as well as outstanding reliability and protection for its critical business data.

Data Center Modernization: Bernalillo County, New Mexico
Bernalillo County upgraded its server and storage infrastructure in order to operate more efficiently and provide additional services to county residents in a project led by Mike Gruen, who accepted the award for the county. The county’s Itanium-rich HP solution offers cost savings over the previous mainframe environment, boosts application reliability, increases performance across multiple platforms and allows for expedited new server deployment. Additionally, its Itanium-based IT foundation has paved the path for the county to deploy new initiatives including virtualized application workloads and a new ERP solution.

Computationally Intensive Applications: CESGA
Fundación CESGA, the Supercomputing Center of Galicia, Spain, is using the Finis Terrae Supercomputer to analyze massive computational electromagnetics problems, the largest with more than 500 million unknowns, for improvement of design in industry. Under the leadership of Dr. José Carlos Mouriño Gallego, who accepted the award, CESGA relied on Itanium-based HP Integrity servers with 1,024 parallel processors and 6TB of memory in attaining the first-of-its-kind solution. The Itanium architecture was key to the success of the effort, as the rigorous integral equation-based solvers used in computational electromagnetics consume massive amounts of RAM memory in such large-scale, real-world calculations.

Humanitarian Impact: Kiwok
Announced in July, Humanitarian Impact award winner Kiwok was selected for its BodyKom Series™ remote ECG monitor. The award was accepted by Björn Söderberg and Anders Björlin of Kiwok. Deployed in conjunction with caregivers and health systems, BodyKom allows heart patients to live independently while their heart is monitored through a reliable wireless network powered by Itanium-based hardware. The Kiwok system provides automatic, real-time notifications as well as furnishing long-term data for diagnosis and treatment. Utilizing an HP Integrity NonStop server to ensure the heart monitoring information is reliable, secure and highly available at all times, the BodyKom technology saves significant resources by freeing up hospital beds and providing immediate feedback on the effects of ongoing treatments. “We couldn’t be more pleased with the success of this year’s Itanium Innovation Awards program, or more proud of the organizations whose remarkable work we are able to recognize,” said Jacobs, president and executive director of the Alliance. “With a stellar event, a respected panel of judges and our strongest collection of entries yet, this year’s awards program is a testament to the strength of the Itanium ecosystem as well as the capability of Itanium-based solutions to make a tremendous impact from the laboratory to the enterprise data center.”

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

Award for NHS blood and transplant system

2009-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

Bristol-based XDelta Limited has been awarded an honourable mention in the Humanitarian Impact category of the 2009 Itanium Innovation Awards programme for its information system for managing blood supplies and donated organs. The programme is run by the Itanium Solutions Alliance, a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors using Intel Itanium systems.

XDelta designed and implemented the new multi-site disaster-tolerant system platform for the “Pulse Renewal” project for NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT). NHSBT is a Special Health Authority in the NHS, responsible for managing the National Blood Service in England and North Wales. It is also the organ donor organisation for the UK and is responsible for matching and allocating donated organs.

The Pulse system manages the entire supply chain of blood products from donation, through testing and blood product production, to the safe and timely issue of blood products across England and North Wales.

Lynda Hamlyn, chief executive of NHS Blood & Transplant said: "Our Pulse database system stores information on each blood donor and blood donor session. It enables us to track every blood component from donation to when it is supplied to a hospital. It is vital to the operations of the National Blood Service. The consolidation of three regional Pulse databases onto a single national system has been successfully completed. The effective implementation of information technology has enabled a single resilient database which has improved efficiency, reduced data duplication and lowered business costs."

The organisations that collaborated to deliver this project were:

NHSBT — end customer;
Savant — Pulse application provider and maintainer;
Mimer — Mimer-SQL database provider;
OCSL — HP reseller and hardware installer;
XDelta — system platform design and implementation; and
HP — consulting & integration, DTCS, OpenVMS Engineering.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognise and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel Itanium-based servers in their applications. A panel of distinguished judges evaluated submissions on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality of the solution.

“For our second annual Innovation Awards, we received a large number of very compelling entries from across the globe, showcasing a wide variety of innovative applications backed by Itanium-based technology,” said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “We are pleased to recognise this year’s finalists for their groundbreaking work with Itanium-based systems from across the spectrum of industry and research.”

The Humanitarian Impact category awards the innovative use of Itanium-based systems to deliver results that benefit humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts. Examples include natural disaster modelling and prediction, resource management, health care advances, and biosciences research.

Read the original release from bjhc&im here.

SGI to Debut Octane� III Personal Supercomputer at Intel Developer Forum 2009

2009-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

Demonstrations of Newly Launched Octane III and CloudRack™ C2 in Booth #718; SGI Customers Nominated for Itanium Innovation Awards

Intel Developer Forum 2009, San Francisco

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI (NASDAQ:SGI) announced today that it will showcase Octane™ III, the company’s newly announced personal supercomputer for high-performance computing (HPC) in office environments, and CloudRack™ C2, its leading data center solution for cluster computing at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2009 from September 22 - 24 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

SGI Booth #718 in Technology Showcase’s Hyper-scale Solutions for Cloud Services Community will feature the following products:

* Octane III – SGI’s new personal supercomputer that combines the power and performance capabilities of a high-performance deskside cluster with the portability and usability of a workstation. Octane III permits up to 80 high-performance cores and nearly 1TB of memory for unparalleled performance, yet is whisper-quiet for the workplace. Octane III also offers advanced NVIDIA graphics and GP-GPU capabilities, is pre-configured for immediate ease-of-use right out of the box, and is powerful enough for some of the most complex HPC applications in the world. * CloudRack C2 – CloudRack C2 is the next-generation server cabinet with high-density compute trays, advanced scale-out capabilities and MicroSlice™ architecture for cluster computing, data center physicalization, maximum compute power and unparalleled cooling efficiency. CloudRack C2 is uniquely suited for the most challenging Internet and cloud computing environments.

“The Intel Developer Forum is an amazing opportunity to bring together various technology solution providers who are integrating Intel technology, and SGI is excited to be a part of this distinguished group,” said George Skaff, chief marketing officer at SGI. “We also look forward to showcasing our new personal supercomputer, Octane III, which bridges the gap for HPC users between the desktop and the data center.”

SGI customers, the University of Warwick and Masaryk University, are finalists in Itanium® Solutions Alliance’s third-annual Itanium Innovation Awards, which celebrate forward-looking organizations and their groundbreaking work using Intel® Itanium processors. These universities use SGI® Altix® 450 and SGI® Altix® 3700 supercomputers with Intel Itanium processors to advance new research and run mission-critical applications. The University of Warwick in the United Kingdom is a finalist in the category of Computationally Intensive Applications, and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic is a finalist in the Mission-Critical Data category. Winners will be announced at the Itanium Innovation Awards ceremony on Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

About SGI

SGI is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high-performance storage, HPC and data center enablement and services. SGI is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

© 2009 SGI. SGI, CloudRack, Octane and MicroSlice are registered trademarks or trademarks of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

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SGI's Itanium super smokes Java test

2009-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

Don't bogart that Altix box

By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author

Posted in HPC, 17th September 2009 15:51 GMT

Free whitepaper – Guidelines for specification of data center power density

Even before Rackable Systems bought the carcass of supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics in April and took its name a month later, the future of the Itanium-based Altix shared memory supercomputers was in question.

Since the takeover, the new SGI has been trying to stir up some interest in the existing machines while not exactly committing to the future Itanium processors from Intel.

What is a supercomputer maker that wants to sell big boxes today (but which is working on a shared memory system code-named "UltraViolet" and taking the NUMAlink technology from the Altix machines and mixing it with the future Intel eight-core "Nehalem EX" processors due early next year) to do? Look for business in the data center by positioning the current shared memory Altix super as a great box to run Java applications, apparently.

SGI teamed up with the Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany, one of its largest customers, to run a series of commercial benchmark tests from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation on its high-end Altix 4700 sporting dual-core, 1.6 GHz Itanium 9040 processors. The LRZ has a 1,024-core Altix 4700 set up with 4 TB of shared memory across the NUMA nodes and is one of the most powerful boxes that SGI ever sold. Just for fun, SGI and LRZ carved out half of the machine's cores (which are comprised of 128 two-socket blade servers) and 1.5 TB of shared main memory and let the SPECjbb2005 commercial Java benchmark run like a bat out of hell on the machine.

The Altix 4700 setup was configured with Novell's SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 operating system and Oracle's JRockit JVM, and cranked through more than 9.6 million business operations per second (BOPS) on the SPECjbb2005 test. (One wonders why SGI and LRZ didn't give the SPEC Java test the whole machine, and perhaps bust through 19 million BOPS.)

Read the entire article from The Register here.

Sophos Malware Protection Now Available to HP Integrity Server Customers

2009-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

HP Integrity Server Customers Who Select Sophos AntiVirus Will Receive Malware Protection Free for One Year

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IT security and data protection vendor Sophos today announced that its industry-recognized anti-malware technology, Sophos AntiVirus, will be offered free for one year to HP Integrity server customers who select Sophos for comprehensive protection against the latest viruses and other malware threats. Unlike many vendors’ anti-malware solutions, Sophos supports all platforms that run on HP Integrity servers¹ – UNIX, Linux, Windows and OpenVMS – in one all-inclusive license.

“We are pleased to offer Sophos AntiVirus to HP customers to help them proactively protect their Integrity servers against the latest malware threats,” said Mike McGuinness, senior vice president, worldwide sales and field operations at Sophos. “With support for the broadest range of platforms, including all HP Integrity servers, customers who select Sophos AntiVirus will benefit from complete, easy-to-manage, cross-platform malware protection from a single vendor solution.”

“Customers need to protect their servers against today’s emerging threats while reducing the complexities of frequent software updates,” said Lorraine Bartlett, vice president of marketing for Business Critical Systems at HP. “HP Integrity servers running Sophos AntiVirus software help customers cost effectively manage infrastructure security, mitigate their risk and concentrate on driving business growth.”

Sophos’s global network of threat analysis centers, SophosLabs™, analyzes more than 40,000 new suspicious files everyday and consistently creates and delivers threat protection updates around the clock. Sophos uses unique technologies, such as Behavioral Genotype® Protection, that expedite detection and block unknown malware without waiting for specific detection to be made available.

To qualify for this one year free Sophos AntiVirus offer, HP Integrity server resellers and their customers must register here using a provided promotional code and valid HP Integrity server serial number.

Sophos AntiVirus is backed by 24x7x365 technical support that is available at no additional cost. HP Integrity server customers who require or prefer enhanced support beyond the standard phone, email and web support can upgrade to Premium support at a fixed price.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs—a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

¹HP-UX 11i v1, v2 and v3 on Itanium, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and OpenVMS 8.3 on Itanium.

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SGI� Surpasses HP, IBM and Sun in Benchmarked Performance and Scalability

2009-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

SGI Sets World Records in Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) Benchmarks

FREMONT, Calif. — September 16, 2009 — SGI® (NASDAQ: SGI) today announced that the SGI® Altix® 4700 platform, powered by Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® Processor 9040 (1.6GHz), outperformed top competitors including HP, IBM and Sun in all relevant Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) benchmarks for performance and scalability. The SGI world records were recently achieved at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany, and prove SGI to be the leading single-system image (SSI) platform in the world, surpassing competitor performance by more than five times in some cases.

"SGI Altix outperformed HP, IBM and Sun," said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of SGI. "Our customers require the fastest compute and storage systems possible. For floating point arithmetic, we were 5 times faster than IBM, and for Java, we were 4 times faster than Sun. SGI is pleased with setting these world records in very relevant technology areas."

SGI Altix 4700's dominance in the three SPEC benchmarks illustrates that:

SGI is more than five times faster than its next closest SSI competitor in the SPECfp_rate_base2006 floating point performance benchmark. Altix 4700 proved 5.7 times faster than the Sun SPARC Enterprise 9000, its next closest SSI competitor; IBM and HP products trailed further behind.
SGI performed over four times better in the SPECint_rate_base2006 integer performance benchmark. Altix 4700 proved 4.3 times faster than the Sun product, its next closest SSI competitor.
SGI outperforms IBM by almost three times in Java performance with SPECjbb2005 benchmark. Altix 4700 is the leader in Java performance as measured by SPECjbb2005, outperforming IBM by 2.8 times.
SGI has five times higher aggregate memory bandwidth than its next closest competitors. Altix 4700 has the highest aggregate memory bandwidth in the world, five times higher than its next closest competitors, NEC and IBM.

"The results of these SPEC benchmarks are impressive, and SGI Altix has proven to be a powerhouse among scale-up architectures for some of the most complex real-world HPC applications in the world," said Steve Conway, IDC's research vice president of HPC. "For example, one Fortune 500 company we recently visited reserves Altix for the firm's toughest jobs while assigning other work to standard clusters. These SPEC benchmarks are an absolute home run and solidify Altix's position as a leading platform in its space."

SGI Altix is a large, shared-memory SSI architecture that powers some of the most important systems in the world, facilitating research in such fields as global warming, fraud detection and homeland security. The SGI benchmarking experts used an SSI node with 1024 Itanium cores and 4TB of memory with Novell's SuSE Linux® Enterprise 10 operating environment to achieve these results in three SPEC benchmarks: SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate_base2006 and SPECfp_rate_base2006.

Complete SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006 results are available at: http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2009q3/jbb2005-20090727-00756.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2009q3/cpu2006-20090802-08312.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2009q3/cpu2006-20090802-08313.html

For more information about SGI Altix 4700 please visit: http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/4000/.

About SGI
SGI® is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high-performance storage, HPC, data center enablement and services. SGI is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

Contact Information:

Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Jen Spark
415-512-0770
SGIPR@schwartz-pr.com

SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive results from www.spec.org as of August 28, 2009.

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CHIP SHOT: SGI�S ITANIUM ALTIX 4700 SETS THREE SPEC RECORDS

2009-09-10T00:00:00-07:00

An SGI® Altix® 4700 platform, supercharged by the Intel® Itanium® Processor 9040 (1.6GHz), ordered threesome SPEC criterion concern records at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Germany. SGI utilised a single-system ikon (SSI) convexity with 1024 Itanium cores, 4TB of module and Novell’s SuSE Linux® Enterprise 10 operative surround to attain record-breaking results on SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate_base2006 and SPECfp_rate_base2006 benchmarks.

Read the original article from ICT Magazine here.

SGI� Sets World Records On Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) Benchmarks

2009-09-09T00:00:00-07:00

SGI® Altix® 4700 Single-System Image Platform Proven Unbeatable In Performance, Scalability and Flexibility

FREMONT, Calif. — September 9, 2009 — SGI® (NASDAQ: SGI) today announced the SGI® Altix® 4700 platform, powered by Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® Processor 9040 (1.6GHz), claimed three Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) benchmark world records at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. The Altix installation at LRZ—one of three national supercomputing centers in Germany and one of the largest Altix 4700 installations in the world—is optimized to deliver high-application performance and high-memory bandwidth for scientific projects and simulations.

SGI benchmarking experts used a single-system image (SSI) node with 1024 Itanium cores, 4TB of memory and Novell's SuSE Linux® Enterprise 10 operating environment to achieve record-breaking results on three SPEC benchmarks for computer systems: SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate_base2006 and SPECfp_rate_base2006, thus solidifying Altix's leadership in high-performance computing (HPC) and Internet computing environments.

"The Altix 4700 continues to shatter world records in performance, speed and scalability; it is the leading single-system image platform available," said Giovanni Coglitore, senior vice president and chief products officer at SGI. "The Altix 4700 outperforms its closest SSI competitor by more than five times in some of these important industry benchmarks."

SGI Altix is a large, shared-memory SSI architecture that powers some of the world's most important systems that facilitate research in such fields as global warming, fraud detection and homeland security. The scalable Altix 4700 platform offers a unique modular blade design for superior performance, density and "plug-and-solve" flexibility for technical and scientific users.

"Over the past three years, LRZ has been able to run large-scale OpenMP codes on its Altix 4700 system, which could not be executed on any other machine in Germany," said Dr. Horst-Dieter Steinhöfer, head of the high-performance systems department at LRZ. "With benefits such as the large memory nodes, a large portfolio of standard software applications and the high quality development environment, Altix systems have quickly become well adopted by German scientists, thereby validating LRZ's strategy to provide state-of-the-art supercomputing services."

The Benchmarks:
SPECjbb2005 provides a realistic evaluation of the performance of servers running typical Java business applications for Internet, finance, enterprise and database applications by emulating a three-tier client/server system, with emphasis on the middle tier. The benchmark exercises the capabilities of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), its operating system and the performance of CPUs, caches, memory hierarchy and the scalability of shared-memory systems.

SGI established leadership in this benchmark with 9,611,262 Business Operations per Second (BOPS) with the Altix 4700 with 512 Itanium cores, 1.6GHz and 18MB cache using the Oracle® JRockit JVM. The new result is over 74 percent higher than the previous record. This benchmark leadership further proves that immensely powerful, high-bandwidth hardware, like Altix servers with Intel Itanium processors, paired with JRockit JVM, is a force in the industry for server-side Java performance.

The SPEC CPU2006 rate benchmark measures the capacity of a system to complete a fixed number of tasks. These tests stress the scalability of the operating system, the memory subsystem and, to some extent, the I/O subsystem in large, shared-memory environments. It provides a good indication of the capability of a system to handle a mix of applications and workloads. Altix 4700's scalable, distributed shared-memory architecture and high-performance Linux OS yielded world-record SPEC CPU2006 rate results, proving it is an ideal platform for application fusion.

SPECfp_rate_base2006 puts tremendous stress on the kernel, scheduler, file system, memory bandwidth and I/O bandwidth. Using a partition of the large Altix 4700 system at LRZ, configured with 1024 Itanium cores, 1.6GHz and 18MB cache, SGI achieved the world record with a SPECfp_rate2006 score of 10600, which is over five times faster than the next closest SSI competitor on the SPEC list.

On the same Altix 4700 configuration, the SGI benchmarking team set a new world record for the industry-standard SPECint_rate_base2006 benchmark suite, achieving a score of 9030, which is almost four times faster than the next closest SSI competitor.

"It is exciting to see the SGI Altix excel in these important industry benchmarks for high-performance business computing," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "SGI Altix, powered by the latest Intel Itanium processors, has once again proven itself with significant performance momentum and scalability for the most complex business computing applications."

For more information about SGI Altix 4700 please visit http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/4000/.

Complete SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006 results are available at:
http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2009q3/jbb2005-20090727-00756.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2009q3/cpu2006-20090802-08312.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2009q3/cpu2006-20090802-08313.html

About SGI SGI® is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high-performance storage, HPC, data center enablement and services. SGI is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

Contact Information:

Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Jen Spark
415-512-0770
SGIPR@schwartz-pr.com

SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive results from www.spec.org as of August 28, 2009.

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Clerity Solutions Selected as Finalist in the Data Center Modernization Category of the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards

2009-08-17T00:00:00-07:00

Chicago, IL – August 17, 2009 – The Itanium Solutions Alliance® today announced that Clerity Solutions has been selected as a finalist in the Data Center Modernization category of its 2009 Innovation Awards program. Clerity Solutions' UniKix mainframe rehosting software suite provides a mission-critical environment for deploying online and batch mainframe workloads on open systems. By adding support for Itanium-based-systems in UniKix 11.0, Clerity can offer direct and independent software vendor customers greater choice and extremely high reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) levels on open systems.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognize and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel® Itanium-based servers in their applications. A panel of distinguished judges evaluated submissions on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality of the solution.

“For our second annual Innovation Awards, we received a large number of very compelling entries from across the globe, showcasing a wide variety of innovative applications backed by Itanium-based technology,” said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “We are pleased to recognize this year's finalists for their groundbreaking work with Itanium-based systems from across the spectrum of industry and research.”

The Data Center Modernization category highlights the success of projects in which an organization has migrated from a mainframe-based infrastructure to an open architecture framework to employ the reliability, availability and serviceability of Itanium-based systems.

Winners will be honored at a special event during the Intel Developer Forum, September 23rd, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Click here for additional information on Clerity's mainframe rehosting software.

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Clerity Solutions Vies for Data Center Modernization Award

2009-08-17T00:00:00-07:00

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Mainframe migration, modernization, and optimization solution provider Clerity Solutions (www.clerity.com) has been selected by the Itanium Solutions Alliance (www.itaniumsolutions.org) as a finalist in the "data center modernization" category of its 2009 Innovation Awards program for its outstanding use of Intel Itanium-based servers in its applications.

According to its Monday announcement, Clerity's UniKix mainframe re-hosting software suite, which provides a mission-critical environment for deploying online and batch mainframe workloads on open systems, is in the running for the data center modernization award to be given at the Intel Developer Forum 2009 in San Francisco, which is happening September 22 to 24.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognize and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel Itanium-based servers in their applications. A panel of distinguished judges evaluated submissions on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality of the solution.

Aside from Clerity, finalists in the data center modernization category include Bernalillo County, Enagas, and the Brazilian Navy.

Read the full article from Web Host Industry Review.

HOPS INTERNATIONAL is a Finalist in the Intel 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards

2009-08-10T00:00:00-07:00

Miami Lakes, Fla. – August 10th, 2009 – The Itanium® Solutions Alliance has announced that HOPS International has been selected as a finalist in the Computationally Intensive Applications category for its 2009 Innovation Awards program.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards program was designed to recognize and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel® Itanium-based servers in their applications. A panel of distinguished judges evaluated submissions on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality of the solution.

“For our second annual Innovation Awards, we received a large number of very compelling entries from across the globe, showcasing a wide variety of innovative applications backed by Itanium-based technology,” said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “We are pleased to recognize this year’s finalists for their groundbreaking work with Itanium-based systems from across the spectrum of industry and research.”

The Computationally Intensive Applications category recognizes organizations that have applied their Itanium systems to tackle huge, critical workloads that demand consistently high performance and scalable, shared resources.

“We are thrilled to have been nominated a finalist for the 2009 Itanium Innovation Awards,” said John Moses, chief technical officer at HOPS ( jmoses@hops.com ). “The Itanium-based servers in our solution allow for fast CPUs, a fast I/O, and the cost advantages of significant upgrade paths with our long-standing partner, HP.”

All winners will be honored at a special event during the Intel Developer Forum, September 23rd, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

About HOPS International
HOPS (www.hops.com) is a leading provider of data analytic tools and products, utilizing its unique data analysis engine to quickly get clients to places they have never been before. HOPS, which stands for Heuristic Optimized Processing System, is the fastest and most flexible on-demand analysis solution available for large sets of data. Currently, HOPS services over 100,000 unique subscribers, houses 600 terabytes of customer data and produces over 350,000 monthly reports for the health care, financial processing and retail markets. HOPS is headquartered in Miami Lakes, Florida.

Contact:
Steven Boyer, Director of Marketing
HOPS International
(305) 827-8600 x289
sboyer@hops.com

Read the original release here from PRLog.

Dartford uses Itanium as bridge to EPR

2009-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

05 Aug 2009

Sarah Bruce

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust is taking forward plans for an electronic patient record system by putting a new server platform under the latest version of iSoft's PatientCentre patient administration system.

It is acting now because it needs to replace the hardware platform for its existing PAS. It has always been an Torex/iSoft customer. It will replace its Alpha/Unix servers, which are no longer supported by HP, with HP's new Intel Itanium server platform.

Despite this, and the cost of investing in new hardware, the trust decided to upgrade to Intel's Itanium server architecture. However, it decided to continue to run its CliniCom PAS.

A spokesperson for iSoft told EHI that the company has another 33 sites running PatientCentre and CliniCom on Alpha severs, and that at least four trusts have decided to upgrade to its new hardware platform.

The Itanium server platform will also support the trust’s own developments, which include a clinician developed application for electronic discharge summaries and RFID tracking of equipment.

Last year, HP announced that it was ceasing support for the Alpha server. Since then, an iSoft project team has been working on the replacement Itanium technology, which also required new versions of the operating system, database technology and product code.

Link: iSoft

Read the entire article from E-Health Insider here.

Hardware upgrade provides timely boost for kent hospital

2009-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

Wednesday 5th August 2009

iSOFT Group Limited has moved Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust to HP's latest Itanium hardware, allowing it to press ahead with plans for an electronic patient record (EPR) at the 460-bed Darent Valley Hospital at Dartford.

"There are huge benefits from increased performance, improved resilience, and reduced risk," says Leslieann Osborn, the trust's assistant director of service development. "But, importantly, it provides a solid platform to move forward with our IT strategy and particularly moving us towards an electronic patient record. It is an enabler to introduce the clinical applications that our nurses and clinicians now want to see."

Itanium also provides a platform for the trust's own developments. The first of these is a clinician-developed application for electronic discharge notices.

There are plans to extend its use of 'computers on wheels', or COWs, making PatientCentre available at the bedside on all wards for ready access to patient and clinical records. It will also allow printing of patient wristbands at the point of admission.

The move to HP Itanium, and porting of 750,000 patient records, was completed over a weekend with no disruption to staff or patients. "The smooth transition was due to meticulous planning," Osborn said.

For iSOFT, the project provides a proof-of-concept for other trusts considering the move to Itanium.

Read the entire article from Hospital IT Europe here.

University of Warwick shortlisted for international innovation award

2009-08-04T00:00:00-07:00

The University of Warwick has been selected as a finalist in the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards.

Warwick’s Centre for Scientific Computing has been shortlisted in the Computationally Intensive Applications category.

The entry, ‘On Large Scale Diagonalisation Techniques for the Anderson Model of Localisation’ received high marks from a panel of prestigious judges for its innovation and positive impact.

The work done concentrates on simultaneously solving millions of coupled mathematical equations. Such a scenario arises, for example, in the study of quantum physics. In particular, the so-called Anderson Model of Localisation was considered as an especially important such problem class.

Director of the Centre for Scientific Computing, Dr Rudolf Roemer, said: “We are delighted we have been selected as a finalist for such a prestigious award. There was strong competition this year from a number of high-profile organizations on a global basis, so being selected is a category finalist is indeed a significant achievement.”

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognise and reward users and developers for outstanding use of Intel Itanium-based servers in their applications.

A panel of judges evaluated submissions on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced and originality of the solution.

Winners will be honoured at a special event during the Intel Developer Forum on September 23 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Notes to editors
For more information, please contact Kelly Parkes-Harrison, Communications Officer, University of Warwick, 02476 574255, 07824 540863, k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk

Revenue Management Solutions and Online Resources Named Itanium Innovation Award Finalists for Outstanding Use of NEC Premier Servers

2009-08-04T00:00:00-07:00

Global Community Lauds Ground-breaking Itanium-based Implementations

Santa Clara, Calif. - August 4, 2009 - NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, today announced that the Itanium Solutions Alliance has selected Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) and Online Resources Corporation as finalists for its Itanium Innovation Awards, recognizing both organizations' innovative use of NEC's dynamic server solutions to improve business functions.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards recognizes end users and developers for outstanding use of Itanium-based servers in their applications. In particular, both RMS and Online Resources turned to datacenter class NEC Express5800/1320Xf and 1080Rf Itanium-based enterprise servers to improve performance, availability, and scalability of their services.

"We commend both RMS and Online Resources for implementing ground-breaking technology to transform their IT operations and business value for the better," said Karen Dutch, vice president of marketing and support, IT Platform and Solutions Groups, NEC Corporation of America. "These achievements are the ultimate proof points of NEC's commitment to working diligently with our partners and clients to provide best-in-class solutions for any Windows or SQL Server 2008 installation requiring high levels of performance, resiliency, and available within a single system environment."

NEC customer Revenue Management Solutions is being recognized for maintaining one of the largest Microsoft SQL Server databases in the world with more than 100 billion records, requiring a system that is secure, reliable, scalable and powerful enough to keep up with massive company growth. The company's current system configuration utilizes Itanium-based systems from NEC.

"This accolade is a tremendous accomplishment for our company," said John Oakes, vice president of information technology, Revenue Management Solutions. "With NEC storage and server solutions, RMS was able to create a powerful, consolidated environment to reduce management costs and deployment time of new Microsoft applications while allowing us to continue to reliably address any customer requirements, as well as grow our business. NEC's products have made a world of difference."

Online Resources is also being recognized for its implementation of Itanium-based NEC servers and a Microsoft SQL Server database. Online Resources powers financial technology services for financial institutions, billers and credit service providers, offering online banking services, payment and marketing services.

"With more than 14 million consumers accessing their online banking systems around the clock to process financial transactions, Online Resources has continually looked for ways to deliver performance, in order to enhance consumers' online experience and maximize user satisfaction," said Bill Michael, senior vice president, Corporate Systems Operations, Online Resources Corporation. "Being recognized by the Itanium Solutions Alliance is a great testament to this dedication. As one of the nation's fastest growing technology companies, we needed a solution that could scale to support our growth, and NEC's products proved to do just that and more."

Leveraging NEC's world-class supercomputer and mainframe heritage, NEC' Express5800/1320Xf floor standing and 1080R rack mount Itanium-based enterprise servers represent the third-generation in NEC's family of highly expandable datacenter class platforms. NEC Express5800/1320Xf enterprise server offers a track record of leading TPC-E rated SQL performance. Combined with Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, the NEC Express5800/1320 Itanium-based system is the first in the industry to be certified by Microsoft to support dynamic hardware partitioning within a Windows 2008 environment. NEC has delivered mainframe-class RAS features in its enterprise servers for over 40 years.

NEC Express5800 series of servers are part of NEC's Dynamic IT Infrastructure-a solution that includes servers, storage, virtual desktop solutions, and system software that are smart, flexible, adaptive to change, scalable, resilient, and continuously evolving. Along with NEC's broad range of services-the NEC Dynamic IT Infrastructure provides an ideal platform for virtualization, consolidation and business continuity and is ideal for driving greater value and efficiencies in solutions for physical security, law enforcement, emergency response, travel and entertainment, education, high performance computing, and business. This type of infrastructure allows IT organizations to move forward confidently and meet changing and growing business needs in an efficient manner. For more information about NEC's Express5800 servers, please visit www.necam.com/Servers/Enterprise.

The winners of the awards in Computationally Intensive Applications, Data Center Modernization, and Mission-Critical Data will be announced at the 2009 Innovation Awards Celebration on September 23, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards
The Itanium Innovation Awards recognizes and rewards end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel^® Itanium-based servers in their organizations or applications. Panels of distinguished judges evaluated submissions from 14 countries spanning five continents based on a number of criteria, such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality, and their scores were tabulated to select the finalists and winners in each category. For more information, please visit http://www.itaniumsolutions.org/itanium_innovation_awards.

About NEC Corporation of America
NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of network, IT and identity management solutions. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications to biometric security, virtualization and digital cinema solutions. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit http://www.necam.com/dynamicIT.

Contacts::
Linda Goncalves
NEC Corporation of America
(408) 844-1325
linda.goncalves@necam.com

Kelly Indrieri
Kulesa Faul for NEC Corporation of America
(650) 340-1983
kelly@kulesafaul.com

Itanium Solutions Alliance Selects Sweden�s Kiwok as the 2009 Innovation Awards Winner for Humanitarian Impact

2009-07-27T00:00:00-07:00

The Alliance also names honorable mentions for humanitarian impact and finalists in all other award categories

PORTLAND, Ore., July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced Kiwok Nordic AB as the winner in the Humanitarian Impact category of its 2009 Itanium Innovation Awards. Judges selected Kiwok for its BodyKom™ Series remote ECG monitor. Deployed in conjunction with caregivers and health systems, BodyKom allows heart patients to live independently while their heart is monitored through a reliable wireless network powered by Itanium-based hardware. The Kiwok system provides automatic, real-time notifications as well as furnishing long-term data for diagnosis and treatment.

Finalists have also been chosen in the awards program’s three other categories: Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, and Computationally Intensive Applications. Winners will be announced at the 2009 Innovation Awards Celebration on September 23 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

“We are delighted to have received so many worthy entries to our Innovations Awards program this year and would like to thank all the companies from across the world who submitted their Itanium-based projects,” said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “With so many outstanding deployments to choose from, the judges had the difficult task of selecting the Humanitarian Impact winner and category finalists. The organizations recognized this year are to be congratulated for their innovative work, and for demonstrating the power of Itanium-based platforms to tackle intricate business problems and drive singular solutions to global challenges.”

"As a spokesman for the whole Kiwok team, I am most honored to receive this prestigious award,” said Bjorn Soderberg, sales and marketing director, Kiwok. “But it wouldn’t have been possible to create this solution without our core partners, the Karolinska University Hospital, HP, Fair Isaac and Wireless Independent Provider. This award we also see as the start for our international launch, with the goal to have the BodyKom solution up and running across new markets within the coming 12 months."

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards recognizes and rewards end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel® Itanium-based servers in their organizations or applications. Panels of distinguished judges evaluated submissions from 14 countries spanning five continents based on a number of criteria, such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality, and their scores were tabulated to select the finalists and winners in each category.

Humanitarian Impact

The Humanitarian Impact category awards the innovative use of Itanium-based systems to deliver results that benefit humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts. The winner in this category receives a $50,000 cash award to support their important work.

Humanitarian Impact winner Kiwok’s BodyKom collects ECG data from patients whose heart conditions do not require hospitalization, yet require periodic or frequent monitoring. Utilizing an HP Integrity NonStop server to ensure the heart monitoring information is reliable, secure and highly available at all times, the BodyKom technology saves significant resources by freeing up hospital beds and providing immediate feedback on the effects of ongoing treatments.

The following entries were category finalists and earned honorable mentions for their Humanitarian Impact:

* XDelta Limited was responsible for the design and implementation of the disaster-tolerant system platform for “Pulse Renewal,” a project for the National Health Service Blood & Transplant organization that manages the entire supply chain of blood products from donation, through testing and blood product production, to the safe and timely issue of blood products across England and North Wales. The system implements disaster-tolerant OpenVMS clusters using Itanium-based HP Integrity Servers and contains the world’s largest single national database of blood donors.
* Purvis Systems, contractor to the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY), ported the FDNY's City-wide Management Information and Control System to an HP Itanium rx3600 running OpenVMS V8.3. The system powers dispatch to all five boroughs, supporting the 11,275 uniformed fire personnel in 221 firehouses with approximately 500 vehicles. The system processed approximately 475,000 incidents in 2008 including 26,862 structural fires, with significantly improved incident response times over the previous system.
* Karlsruhe University’s United Airways project in Germany used Itanium-based HP hardware to analyze the interaction of the human nose, sinuses, larynx and lungs with the goal of compiling a complete numerical simulation of flow behavior in the human respiratory system. The end benefits of this project include optimizing asthma sprays, improving the quality of medical operations and understanding the impact of respirable dust.

Finalists – Computationally Intensive Applications

* CESGA, the Supercomputing Center of Galicia, Spain, is using the Finis Terrae Supercomputer to analyze massive computational electromagnetics problems, the largest with more than 500 million unknowns, for improvement of design in industry. CESGA relied on Itanium-based HP Integrity servers with 1,024 parallel processors and 6TB of memory in attaining the first-of-its-kind solution.
* University of Warwick in the United Kingdom greatly improved the computational approach to the Anderson model of localization, an important problem in quantum physics with a wide range of applications. Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland and the Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany were also involved in these large-scale numerical experiments performed on an SGIO Altix® with 56 Intel IA-64 Itanium processors, each with 3 MB level 3 cache.
* Revenue Management Solutions maintains one of the largest Microsoft® SQL® Server databases in the world with more than 100 billion records, requiring a system that is secure, reliable, scalable and powerful enough to keep up with massive growth. The company’s current system configuration utilizes an 8-socket Itanium-based system from NEC.
* HOPS International used HP Integrity servers with Itanium processors to develop its web-based business intelligence product called HOPS Reveal. The product supports multi-dimensional financial information for organizations with data sets containing upwards of tens of billions of rows of detail transactions. HOPS Reveal is provided in a Software As a Service (SaaS) model and must scale to support millions of licensed users.

Finalists - Data Center Modernization

* Bernalillo County, located in central New Mexico, upgraded its server and storage infrastructure in order to operate more efficiently and provide additional services to county residents. The county’s Itanium-rich HP solution improves the reliability of applications, increases performance across multiple platforms, consolidates servers and allows for expedited new server deployment.
* Clerity Solutions’ UniKix mainframe rehosting software suite provides a mission-critical environment for deploying online and batch mainframe workloads on open systems. By adding support for Itanium-based-systems in UniKix 11.0, Clerity can offer direct and independent software vendor customers greater choice and extremely high reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) levels on open systems.
* ENAGAS, the company responsible for Spain’s gas management, consolidated its legacy Unix infrastructure into two Itanium-based HP Superdomes to streamline operations. The project reduced racks from 12 to four, dramatically lowered application response times and improved the time needed to provision a new test/development environment from several days to less than an hour.
* The Brazilian Navy migrated all mainframe-based database environments—including three large, complex, mission-critical systems: payroll, HR, and accounting systems—to an open, Linux-based system and adopted an HP and Oracle®-based distributed platform with Itanium processors. The project reduced costs by approximately 80 percent while significantly improving resource management.

Finalists - Mission-Critical Data

* Parallels modernizes and consolidates Microsoft® SQL® Server deployments in the enterprise through consolidation using Itanium-based HP Integrity servers and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, offering substantial savings in operational expense.
* Masaryk University in the Czech Republic deployed a massive online information system that integrates 1,600 applications actively used by more than 43,000 students, teachers and other staff into a uniform Web environment. SGI Altix servers running on Itanium processors host tools utilized for online enrollment, e-learning modules, as well as applications allowing students to make payments for services.
* Online Resources powers financial technology services for financial institutions, billers and credit service providers, offering online banking services, card and credit services, and e-commerce gateways. To improve the performance, availability and scalability of its services, Online Resources turned to Itanium-based NEC servers and a Microsoft® SQL® Server database.
* Mobiltel, Bulgaria’s leading telecommunications provider, faced significant subscriber growth, which seriously impacted the performance of its customer relationship management (CRM) and billing applications. Mobiltel migrated its infrastructure to an Itanium-based HP Integrity platform, running both HP-UX and Microsoft Windows Server, with significant gains in performance and customer service.

CONTACT: Joan Jacobs of Itanium Solutions Alliance, +1-508-835-6504, jjacobs224@att.net; or James McIntyre of McClenahan Bruer Communications, +1-503-546-1016, james@mcbru.com, for Itanium Solutions Alliance

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SGI CEO Clarifies Itanium Stance

2009-07-27T00:00:00-07:00

Days after SGI officials said the next-generation Altix system—dubbed “Ultraviolet”—would be powered by Intel’s upcoming Xeon “Nehalem EX” chips, SGI CEO Mark Barrenechea said in a blog that the company will continue developing systems powered by Itanium, and that Ultraviolet will support both Xeon and Itanium processors. However, the first Ultraviolet systems will be powered by Intel's eight-core Nehalem EX chips.

SGI might be building a new high-end Altix system powered by Intel’s upcoming “Nehalem EX” chips, but that doesn’t mean the company is abandoning Itanium, according to SGI CEO Mark Barrenechea.

In a blog post July 24, Barrenechea said that SGI will continue supporting and developing systems that run on Intel’s Itanium processor.

The blog came days after officials with SGI—Silicon Graphics International—spoke with reporters at eWEEK and other new organizations about the company’s roadmap two months after Rackable Systems bought Silicon Graphics Inc.

Click here to read the entire article from eWeek.

SGI� Customers Named as Finalists in Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards

2009-07-27T00:00:00-07:00

Top Universities Achieve Global Industry Recognition Using the SGI® Altix® Platform, Powered by Intel® Itanium Processors

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI® (NASDAQ:SGI) today announced that two of its customers, the University of Warwick and Masaryk University, are finalists in the third annual Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. These awards celebrate forward-looking organizations and their groundbreaking work developed on Intel® Itanium-based solutions.

Itanium processors are an important component of the SGI flagship Altix shared-memory systems used by the world’s elite HPC research installations. Warwick and Masaryk use SGI Itanium-powered solutions, including the SGI Altix 450 and SGI Altix 3700 supercomputers, to advance new research and support mission-critical applications.

“We are thrilled that SGI customers, the University of Warwick and Masaryk University, have been honored as finalists for the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards,” said Mark Barrenechea, president and CEO of SGI. “Itanium processors are the cornerstone in the SGI Altix line of supercomputers because they offer compelling value in reliability, availability, serviceability and memory addressability.”

The University of Warwick in the UK is a finalist in the category of Computationally Intensive Applications. Using an Itanium-based SGI Altix 3700/BX2 supercomputer, the University was able to greatly improve the computational approach to the Anderson model of localization, an important problem in quantum physics. Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland and the Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany were also involved in these large-scale numerical experiments, all of which were performed on the SGI Altix 3700 which features 56 Intel IA-64 Itanium processors.

Masaryk University, a finalist in the Mission-Critical Data Innovation category, is located in the Czech Republic. It developed a massive online information system that integrates 1,600 dynamic applications into a uniform Web environment used by more than 43,000 students, teachers and staff. Itanium-based SGI Altix 350/450 servers host these applications used for online enrollment, e-learning, plagiarism detection and to facilitate student fee processing for university services.

Winners of the Computationally Intensive Applications and Mission-Critical Data categories will be announced at the Innovation Awards celebration, held concurrently with the Intel Developer Forum, September 23rd, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

About SGI

SGI® is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high-performance storage, HPC and data center enablement and services. SGI is dedicated to solving the IT industry’s most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

SGI and Altix are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries worldwide. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Jen Spark, 415-512-0770
SGIPR@schwartz-pr.com

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Indian firms can save up to Rs1 lakh by refreshing Old Desktop PCs: Wipro research

2009-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

India Infoline News Service / Mumbai Jul 23, 2009 17:14

In addition, firms can realize total power savings of Rs5,442 per year by switching from old desktops to laptops.

According to the results of a new study conducted by Wipro Research in India, firms can gain an additional Rs92,935 through increased productivity by refreshing their old desktop PCs with laptops. In addition, firms can realize total power savings of Rs5,442 per year by switching from old desktops to laptops.

Study Methodology: The study polled 50 firms with 1000+ PCs in India in a two step data gathering process. First a survey questionnaire of 45 questions collecting 400 data points on PC management practices and costs was conducted followed by face to face or telephonic interviews to validate the survey. The study polled firms which on an average (with outliers excluded) have 6861 employees, 3609 desktop PC users and 1184 laptop PC users.

Despite challenging economic conditions, there is an unprecedented opportunity to refresh older servers

Anjan Choudhury Chief Technology Officer of Bombay Stock Exchange reemphasizes this fact by saying “In our business, we need to have a reliable, scalable and fault tolerant system. We use HP Integrity Nonstop servers with Intel® Itanium® processors as our core back-end system. Itanium-based systems have very successfully catered to our business requirements during the last bull-run. We have further upgraded the systems even in the present scenario as we need to be ready for the next wave.”

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Pragma�s Fortress SSH Server Brings Breakthrough Generation 2 code

2009-07-15T00:00:00-07:00

AUSTIN, Texas {July 15, 2009} Pragma Systems, a leading provider of enterprise-class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows, announces the 2nd Generation (Gen2) release of Pragma Fortress SSH Server 5. The new Gen2 code adds a wide variety of robust new features including session reconnect, multi-session support, multi-language support and Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and PowerShell support, and significantly enhanced speed, reliability, scalability and performance improvements.

“At Microsoft we continue to support our Microsoft Certified Gold partners in their development efforts and I’m particularly pleased with the latest server offerings from Pragma Systems, comprising Telnet with SSL and a full-featured SSH Server, both leveraging Microsoft’s Crypto,” says Otto Helweg, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. “The Pragma team continues to show their dedication to support the latest offerings from Microsoft which include compatibility with PowerShell and Hyper-V, as well as their recent achievement of Windows Server 2008 Certification. In addition, I look forward to their work in expanding their SSH and PowerShell integration.”

With Fortress’s new capabilities, users only logon once and sessions started any time without having to re-type their logon credentials. In addition, multi-session support is more resource efficient as there is only one secure TCP connection. Session reconnect provides customers the ability to get back to the exact point in their application when a session disconnects due to being out of Wi-Fi range or network outage. Special features in the server detect when a handheld client needs to reconnect versus explicitly disconnecting. Many of these features are in high demand for customers in the Retail and Supply Chain Management industry.

Key Features of Pragma Fortress SSH

* New Gen2 architecture for high performance, reliability, scalability and robustnes
    * Multi-session support in SSH, SFTP, SCP
    * Supports all Microsoft Windows languages
    * Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support
    * Windows PowerShell support including remote execution and loading of outputs into shell variables
    * Supports over 1,000 concurrent sessions
    * Faster file transfer speed using any SFTP or SCP client – 10X increases versus competitive offerings
    * Available in 64-bit, 32-bit or Itanium 64-bit offering Mainframe class performance from Windows Servers

“The release of Pragma’s new Gen2 server technologies proves, once again, the power of aligning with the best strategic partners,” says David Griffith, president of Stay-Linked. “Among the many benefits of Pragma’s new release of their best-in-class telnet and SSH servers is scalability and multi session support - allowing users to maximize the number of application connections per physical server. In today’s economy that translates to real value for our customers who take advantage of the combined offering of our Stay-Linked thin client terminal emulation software with Pragma’s newest industry-leading server technology.”

“Our Gen2 technology strengthens Pragma’s role as the leading Windows SSH server provider,” says Quamrul Mina, CEO of Pragma Systems. “Clocking the fastest file transfer time and the only Windows SSH server to have earned Certified for Windows Server 2008 status are achievements that are bringing new customers and partners into Pragma’s fold every week.”
Pragma Fortress SSH Server provides the highest performance implementation of SSH, SFTP, SCP for performing file transfers, systems management and running remote applications. Coupled with best-in-class FIPS certified encryption and highly secure protocols, Pragma Fortress SSH Server provides network administrators the ultimate network security assurance.

About Pragma Systems, Inc.

Pragma Systems Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows & Windows Mobile platforms. Pragma is an industry leader in Secure Shell and Telnet technology and offers the most popular SSH and TelnetServer for Windows and industrial grade SSH client for handhelds via Pragma PocketVT. The company’s end-to-end solutions of servers and clients for desktops and mobile devices provide highly secure access to corporate supply chain, CRM, distribution and warehouse applications over wired or wireless networks. Pragma’s software is deployed in the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the USA and over 2200 companies worldwide with millions of licensed nodes in over 65 countries. For more information contact Pragma Systems at 512-219-7270; email: pragma@pragmasys.com; visit the website at www.pragmasys.com.

Click here for the original release.

Pragma Telnet Server Adds SSL, Session Reconnect & Windows 7 support

2009-07-15T00:00:00-07:00

AUSTIN, Texas {July 15, 2009} Pragma Systems, a leading provider of enterprise-class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows and Windows Mobile announces the 2nd Generation (Gen2) release of Pragma TelnetServer 7.0. The new Gen2 code adds SSL security to Telnet, enhanced reconnect features for handhelds, multi-language support and Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and PowerShell support, giving users and systems administrators features and functionality to significantly boost their productivity and performance of their systems.

“PEAK Technologies has included the Pragma server technologies as part of our comprehensive data collection solution set for supply chain applications for over nine years to many of our customers,” says Tim Wills, Vice President of Marketing at Peak Technologies. “Pragma technology continues to be the most reliable and dependable technology available for Telnet or SSH remote and secure connectivity access, and we are pleased to see how Pragma continues to lead the market with their new features available on this latest technology release. We are especially interested in talking to our customers about Pragma’s new Telnet with SSL support, which provides our customers with yet another solid alternative for secure remote access.”

Pragma Systems takes pride in listening to its customers and enhances their products accordingly. By adding Telnet SSL, Pragma gives Telnet customers an easy migration path to high security using FIPS certified encryption during telnet sessions. The session reconnect feature is critical for handheld customers. Session reconnect allows customers to get back to the exact point in their application when a session disconnects due to being out of Wi-Fi range. This is a big productivity improvement for customers, especially people in the field who may encounter session drops due to network outage. Our enhanced features in the server detect when a handheld client needs to reconnect versus a handheld explicitly disconnecting.

Key Features of Pragma TelnetServer Gen2:

* New Gen2 architecture for high performance, reliability, scalability and robustness
* Telnet SSL server uses FIPS and United States government certified Microsoft Cryptography, whereas competitors use open source code from openssl
* Session Reconnect feature in both Telnet and TelnetSSL server
* Supports all Microsoft Windows languages
* Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support
* Full Windows PowerShell support including remote execution and loading of outputs into shell variables
* Supports over 1,000 concurrent sessions
* Available in 64-bit, 32-bit or Itanium 64-bit offering Mainframe class performance from Windows Servers

“TelnetSSL provides an excellent migration option to thousands of our customers who have chosen Telnet as their application delivery model,” says Beth Redd, Server Product Manager of Pragma Systems. “Now they can have high security by upgrading to our TelnetSSL without having to rebuild their network with SSH.”

Pragma Telnet Server for Windows uses innovative, patent-pending technology to bring the fastest, most scalable and feature-rich telnet server software for remote network and application access. While performing optimally with Pragma Fortress SSH ClientSuite and Pragma PocketVT, the software allows multiple users from any telnet client on any operating system or handhelds to run console/character applications from Windows. Pragma’s products allow end-to-end remote access and management to computers across an enterprise environment. Customers can now use widely deployed SSL to secure their network using Telnet SSL protocol and perform secured system administration, application delivery and remote application access throughout their computing environments.

About Pragma Systems, Inc.
Pragma Systems Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows & Windows Mobile platforms. Pragma is an industry leader in Secure Shell and Telnet technology and offers the most popular SSH and TelnetServer for Windows and industrial grade SSH client for handhelds via Pragma PocketVT. The company’s end-to-end solutions of servers and clients for desktops and mobile devices provide highly secure access to corporate supply chain, CRM, distribution and warehouse applications over wired or wireless networks. Pragma’s software is deployed in the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the USA and over 2200 companies worldwide with millions of licensed nodes in over 65 countries. For more information contact Pragma Systems at 512-219-7270; email: pragma@pragmasys.com; visit the website at www.pragmasys.com.

Read the original release here.

Pragma Systems Joins the Itanium Solutions Alliance

2009-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

Pragma Systems Joins the Itanium Solutions Alliance

AUSTIN, Texas {July 10, 2009} Pragma Systems, a leading provider of enterprise-class remote access and security software for Windows Server and Windows Mobile, announced it has joined the Itanium Solutions Alliance. Pragma joins a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. The Alliance works to extend the value of mission-critical computing solutions for the Itanium architecture and the Itanium ecosystem as a whole with a focus on mission-critical data, data center modernization, and computationally intensive applications.

“Pragma Systems is pleased to join with a number of other leading hardware and software companies to offer our solutions across the Itanium line of servers,” stated Andrew Tull, vice president of sales and marketing at Pragma Systems. “The Itanium line represents best-in-breed technology solutions for a number of our largest enterprise customers and we are pleased to offer our remote and secure connectivity solutions as part of their infrastructure.”

“Expanding the diverse Alliance membership to include Pragma Systems strengthens our global community of companies working to modernize today’s data centers with Itanium-based solutions,” said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “We enthusiastically welcome Pragma Systems to the Alliance community.”

Pragma Fortress SSH Server and Pragma Telnet Server give customers familiar, quick and reliable ways to deliver applications enterprise-wide from Windows Servers. Pragma’s managed file transfers and systems management abilities provide a highly reliable end-to-end solution platform using Pragma software and Windows Servers. Pragma fully supports the Itanium architecture and all its products are available in native Itanium 64-bit binary form.

Pragma Fortress SSH is an enterprise grade SSH and SFTP server for the Windows Server operating system and both 64-bit and 32-bit versions are Certified for Windows Server 2008. Pragma Fortress SSH Server for Windows uses patent-pending technology to deliver the full power of advanced shells like Windows PowerShell. Pragma Telnet Server provides application delivery and remote access using Telnet protocol that is widely deployed in the supply chain, retail and warehouse-management industry. Pragma SSH ClientSuite and PocketVT provide the client access software for desktops and Windows Mobile devices. Leveraging Pragma’s Itanium platform support, customers can build scalable solutions and attain high level server class performance using Windows Servers.

About Pragma Systems, Inc.

Pragma Systems Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows & Windows Mobile platforms and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Pragma is an industry leader in Secure Shell and Telnet technology and offers the most popular SSH and Telnet servers for Windows and industrial grade SSH clients for desktops (Fortress ClientSuite) and handhelds (Pragma PocketVT). The company’s end-to-end solutions of servers and clients on the desktop and mobile devices provide highly secure access to corporate supply chain, CRM, distribution and warehouse applications over wireless, Bluetooth, LAN, WAN and mobile networks. Pragma’s software is deployed in the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the USA and over 2200 companies worldwide with millions of licensed nodes in over 65 countries.

For more information contact Pragma Systems, Inc., 512-219-7270; email: pragma@pragmasys.com; visit our website at www.pragmasys.com.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance is comprised of some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

Contact: Edith H. Myers Pragma Systems, Inc. Phone: 512-219-7270 emyers@pragmasys.com

Click here to read the original release.

Oracle Delivers World Record Multi-Node Result with SPECjAppServer2004 Benchmark

2009-06-24T00:00:00-07:00

ORACLE CORPORATION, REDWOOD SHORES, CA UNITED STATES

Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware on HP Integrity Server Blades Demonstrates Superior Performance and Scalability

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., June 24 /PRNewswire/ --

News Facts

    * Today, Oracle announced world record multi-node SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark results for Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware.(1)
    * The combination of Oracle WebLogic Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database 11g on mission-critical HP Integrity server blades running HP-UX 11i v3 delivered the record-breaking results, further demonstrating Oracle Fusion Middleware's leadership in Java application server performance and scalability.
    * With this result, Oracle surpasses the best IBM WebSphere multi-node result with IBM DB2 by delivering more than 18 percent greater performance per core.(2)

Benchmark Details

    * Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R 3 together with Oracle Database 11g achieved 28,463 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (jAppServer Operations Per Second). Oracle WebLogic Server was running on 17 HP Integrity BL870c server blades, each with four Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor 9100 series (1.6 GHz). The database server was running on an HP Integrity Superdome server with 64 Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor 9100 series (1.6 GHz) and HP StorageWorks 8100 Enterprise Virtual Arrays. Both application server and database tiers were running HP-UX 11i v3. The HP Integrity BL870c blades running HP-UX 11i v3, used with Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database 11g, provide organizations with a robust and reliable platform for mission-critical applications and is ideal for high-performance and technical computing requirements.
    * For over five years, Oracle has submitted record-setting application server benchmarks on a broad range of hardware and software platforms. Oracle is the performance and price/performance leader in multiple SPECjAppServer 2001(3) and SPECjAppServer2002(4) benchmark categories and also holds the world records for best performance and price/performance in the Ecperf(5) benchmark of J2EE application servers reported in July 2002.
    * SPECjAppServer2004 is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of a representative J2EE application and each of the components that make up the application environment, including hardware, application server software, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers and the system network. For more information, visit http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/.

Supporting Quote

"This world record benchmark result showcases the industry leadership of Oracle Fusion Middleware and its standards-based, hot-pluggable architecture," said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president, Systems Technology, Oracle. "With the unmatched scalability and performance of Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle continues to provide the most comprehensive middleware solution for our customers."

Supporting Resources

    * Oracle Benchmarks
    * Oracle Fusion Middleware
    * Oracle WebLogic Server
    * Oracle Database 11g

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest business software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SPEC, SPECjAppServer are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All results from www.spec.org as of 6/18/2009:

(1) Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R 3 on HP. 17 HP Integrity BL870c server blades, each with four dual-core Intel(R) Itanium(R) 1.6 GHz processors, (136 cores), 28,463 JOPS@Standard. (209 JOPS per core).

(2) WebSphere Application Server V7 on 16 IBM xSeries BladeCenter HS21, each with Quad Core Intel Xeon X5470 3.3 GHz processors, (128 cores), 22,634.13 JOPS@Standard (177 JOPS per core).

(3) Sun Microsystems SunFire V1280 with Oracle9i Application Server, 521.86Bops/min@Std, $1,133.64/BBops (Best performance SPECjAppServer 2001 Dual Node category). Oracle9i AS Release 2 Standard Edition on HP ProLiant DL360, 183.33 BBops/min@Std, $325.13/BBops (Best price performance SPECjAppServer2001 Dual Node category). Oracle9iAS Release 2 on HP rp8400 Cluster, 2,529.10 BBops, $1342.74/Bbops (Best performance SPECjAppServer2001 MultipleNode category). Oracle9iAS Release 2 on HP ProLiant ML530G2 Cluster, 558.85 BBops/min@Std, $389.66/BBops (Best price performance SPECjAppServer2001MultipleNode category). Source: http://www.spec.org. For more information regarding SPECjAppServer2001 results, please visit: http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2001/results/jAppServer2001.html.

(4) Fujitsu-Siemens Computers' PRIMEPOWER 450/2500, Oracle Application Server 10g: 5,991.73 TOPS@MultipleNode, 654.20 Euros TOPS@MultipleNode (Best Overall Performance Result, SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark).

(5) Sun Fire 3800 cluster with Oracle9i AS Release 2, 61,862.77 BBops/min@Std, $28/BBops (Best Overall Performance, ECperf benchmark). HP DL360G2 cluster with Oracle9i AS Release 2, 24,639.37 BBops/min@Std, $5/BBops (Best Overall price/performance, ECperf benchmark). For more information regarding ECperf benchmark results, please visit: http://web.archive.org/web/20050306014256/ecperf.theserverside.com/ecperf/index.jsp?page=results/performance.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGO)

SOURCE Oracle

To read the original release, click here.

Secure64 DNS products to be sold by HP

2009-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

Secure64 Products Address DNS Vulnerabilities, Simplify Deployment of DNSSEC, and Speed Compliance with OMB Mandates

DENVER, CO – June 16, 2009 – Secure64 Software Corporation announced today that it has signed an agreement with HP wherein HP will resell Secure64’s DNS products, including its 2009 FOSE Award-winning DNSSEC software appliance, Secure64 DNS Signer.

“HP Integrity has been our server of choice due to their unique understanding of the power of the Itanium platform,” said Tom Chalk, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Secure64. “HP’s worldwide sales and support organization will help Secure64 penetrate a larger client base that will positively benefit both companies’ bottom line.”ecure64 products run on the entry-class HP Integrity rx2660 and rx3600 servers. These cost-effective and versatile HP platforms provide customers with the performance and capacity to easily handle business-critical applications and heavy-transaction workloads.

“Customers, including government organizations and telecommunication businesses, can significantly improve the security of their online transactions by reducing risks associated with DNS threats,” said Jennifer Millier, vice president of Mission Critical Business Solutions, Business Critical Systems, HP. “The combination of highly-scalable HP Integrity servers and Secure64 DNS Signer provides an easy-to-deploy platform to mitigate vulnerabilities across the data center infrastructure.”

Secure64 DNS Products

Secure64’s suite of DNS products includes Secure64 DNS Signer, a software product that fully automates Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) key generation, key rollover, zone signing and re-signing processes. It reduces deployment and administration costs while eliminating errors that can cause domains to become unavailable. The software also scales to extremely large, dynamic environments by safely keeping DNSSEC signing keys online while providing incremental zone signing and extremely high signing performance.

The company’s other DNS product, Secure64 DNS Authority, is an authoritative name server software product that’s available at all times – even during network attacks or restarts. It delivers the availability and security required in today's networks, without the cost and complexity of conventional solutions.

About Secure64 Software Corporation

Headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Secure64® is a software company offering high-performance DNS server software that makes the DNS trustworthy and secure. Secure64 currently offers two DNS server applications based on SourceT® – the company’s patented Genuinely Secure™ micro OS. Secure64 DNS Signer is the first DNSSEC signing software to make DNSSEC deployment simple and secure. Secure64 DNS Authority is secure DNS server software that is available at all times -– even during network attacks or restarts.

By using Secure64 software, organizations can break the costly and reactive patch management and OS hardening cycle because only Secure64 software is immune to compromise from rootkits and malware and resistant to network attacks that are the source of today’s most serious security threats. For more information, visit www.secure64.com.

To read the original release, click here.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Secures Business and Technology Leaders to Judge 2009 Innovation Awards

2009-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

PORTLAND, Ore., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The Itanium Solutions Alliance announced today it has secured eleven high-profile industry leaders to judge its third-annual Innovation Awards competition. The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognize and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel(R) Itanium-based servers in their applications. Individuals or organizations with Itanium-based solutions may enter, at no cost, in one of four categories: Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive Applications, and Humanitarian Impact.

"We are very pleased to have secured such a strong caliber of judges for this year's Innovation Awards," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "The fact that this year's entries will be carefully evaluated and the winners selected by this distinguished panel of industry leaders adds another dimension of credibility to this prestigious awards competition."

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards judges for 2009 are:

    * Joe B. Alexander, strategy and technology consultant; educator
    * Ken Cayton, president, Systematic Market Analysis
    * Jon Erickson, editor in chief, Dr. Dobb's
    * Sverre Jarp, chief technology officer, CERN openlab
    * Dr. Rinaldo Jose, president and co-founder, Lakeway Technologies
    * George McQuilken, co-founder, eCoast Angels Investment Network
    * Michelle (Mickey) Pierce, senior product manager, Mainframe Migration Alliance, Microsoft
    * Dr. Andrew Razeghi, lecturer, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
    * Clay Ryder, president, The Sageza Group
    * Dr. Mark K. Smith, executive director, Universal Parallel Computing Research Center, and managing director, Gelato Federation
    * Michael Vizard, director of strategic content, Ziff-Davis Enterprise

The judges will evaluate submissions based on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality, and their scores will be tabulated to select each category winner. Winners will be honored at a special event during the Intel Developer Forum, September 23rd, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the winning submission in the Humanitarian Impact category will receive a $50,000 cash award.

The deadline for entries is Wednesday, June 3, 2009. You can submit your online application here. If you have any questions about the form or any trouble submitting your application electronically, please email awards@itaniumsolutions.com.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium(R)-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel(R) Itanium(R) architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

(C) 2009. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE Itanium Solutions Alliance

Click here to read the original release.

Intel, Oracle Stand Tall in Changing Landscape

2009-05-13T00:00:00-07:00

May 12, 2009 By: Amy Newman

Intel's Itanium is a prime example of this. In 2005, the IT press and punditry were all but singing funeral dirges for the beleaguered processor. Partly in response to that, the Itanium Solutions Alliance was born. Today, the 200-plus member community consists of ISVs, OS vendors, software integrators and hardware vendors. The key players remains the OEMs, however, President and Executive Director Joan Jacobs told ServerWatch. Since processors are the underlying component of any hardware purchased, it behooves them to be heavily involved in promoting it.

For anyone still questioning Itanium's viability consider this: While mainframe and RISC systems made up a scant 5 percent of systems shipped in 2008 according to IDC, they account for nearly 50 percent of revenue. Itanium considers itself to be a mainframe equivalent or a mainframe migration destination. (The mainframe vendors may beg to differ, but that's a debate for another day.)

These are scale-up solutions. The are not meant for cloud computing and they do not support x86 virtualization. Which means in these days of commoditization and economizing they aren't getting a lot of attention.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. Being quiet is not the same thing as being stagnant, and the Alliance is aware of the need to adapt a changing marketplace, as is evident in its shift from a focus "on meeting vertical market needs" to a more horizontal approach that meets end-user needs. It has its eye on data center consolidation and mainframe migrations.

To read the entire article from ServerWatch, click here.

HP-UX hardware rises on Itanium adoptions

2009-05-12T00:00:00-07:00

May 12, 2009 By: Ron Seybold

HP 3000 migrations to Unix trip up on a few fronts, but one hurdle is declining of late. Sales of the Itanium chipsets used in HP's Integrity servers are on the rise, measured both by sales and by percentage of market.

Gartner's report might be most important, stating that in 2008 Itanium machine shipments outgrew RISC-based alternatives. Itanium grew in both sales and shipments, although revenues have not kept the same pace as discounting becomes steep in the non-Windows server world. HP is responsible for most of the Itanium increase. The vendor also has reduced its RISC-based sales to the point where more than 80 percent of HP's non-standard server dollars come from Integrity sales.

To read the entire article from Newswire 3000: click here.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Strengthens Mission-Critical Foundation

2009-05-05T00:00:00-07:00

PORTLAND, Ore., May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- While independent analyst data confirm 2008 as a challenging year for the server market, Itanium-based systems showed remarkable resiliency in comparison to competitive platforms, with sales results illustrating the architecture's value for mission-critical computing applications. End-of-year reports released in the first quarter show Itanium-based systems steadily gaining global market share(1) as they outpaced their RISC-based rivals' growth in systems revenues and shipments(2). Year-over-year, Itanium-based system shipments increased 18 percent in 2008, while systems revenue eclipsed the $1 billion mark for the seventh straight quarter in fourth quarter 2008(1).

"While the server business is certainly mired in difficult times, the multifaceted community that surrounds Itanium-based systems has special cause for optimism," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "Even as the performance and scalability of x86 architectures make great progress, the inherent strengths of Itanium-based technology will continue to prove irreplaceable for mission-critical enterprise workloads, including large-scale databases and data warehousing; for the inevitable migration away from costly mainframes; and for intensive applications that rely on parallel processing, large memories and complicated algorithms."

The Alliance's support for software development continues to bear fruit, with more than 14,000 applications now available for Itanium-based systems. Operating system vendors have further validated Itanium's strength in mission-critical enterprise environments, exemplified by the recent launch of Novell SLES 11, the company's enterprise-ready Linux operating system, with a version for Itanium. Moreover, the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 R2 includes dedicated features for high-powered Itanium-based systems users.

"The Itanium architecture scales very well for mission-critical Windows Server deployments, and we've seen a great reception for our SQL Server and Windows Server products on Itanium-based hardware from enterprise customers across a range of industries and workloads," said Eric Jewett, Group Manager, Windows Server, at Microsoft Corp. "In fact, we see many users of Itanium-based systems calling upon SQL Server to improve their business intelligence processes, and specifying Windows Server as an ideal platform when migrating from the mainframe. Looking ahead to Windows Server 2008 R2 with scalability to 256 cores, as well as, our forthcoming SQL Server Kilimanjaro release, our plan is to continue to expand the boundaries of mission-critical Windows computing on Itanium-based servers."

Pursuing a goal of aligning its online resources with the needs of its members and the broader community of Itanium-based systems users, the Alliance began in late 2008 a process of recasting its content with an emphasis on three key areas of strength for Itanium-based systems: data center modernization; mission-critical data; and computationally intensive applications. The newly revamped Alliance web site crosses a major milestone in that process, with content areas unveiled for each theme and new assets planned throughout the year. Also recently launched, the Alliance blog has quickly become a convergence point for news and opinions from vendors, developers and end users.

The same user-oriented approach has been taken with this year's Innovation Awards program, for which the categories have been redefined in line with the themes. In addition, the awards will again include the Humanitarian Impact category, which recognizes the innovative deployment of Itanium-based systems to deliver results that benefit humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts. This category includes a $50,000 award to the winning institution.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium(R)-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel(R) Itanium(R) architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

(1) Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, Q4 2008 (February 2009)

(2) Source: Gartner (March 2009)

SOURCE Itanium Solutions Alliance

To read the original release from PR Newswire, click here.

Itanium: 'A special cause for optimism'

2009-05-05T00:00:00-07:00

Stop laughing - there was growth in 2008

May 5, 2009 By: Timothy Prickett Morgan

This morning, the Itanium Solutions Alliance put out a statement with some vague numbers showing the strength of the Itanium server platform in 2008. By IDC's reckoning of the server space in the fourth quarter, shipments of Itanium-based machines rose by 18 per cent and it was the seventh straight quarter of sales that crested above $1bn for the Itanium server category.

Data from Gartner's report covering 2008's server sales indicated that Itanium machines outgrew RISC-based alternatives in terms of sales and shipments, growing share in each category.

She continued: "Even as the performance and scalability of x86 architectures make great progress, the inherent strengths of Itanium-based technology will continue to prove irreplaceable for mission-critical enterprise workloads, including large-scale databases and data warehousing; for the inevitable migration away from costly mainframes; and for intensive applications that rely on parallel processing, large memories and complicated algorithms."

The irony, of course, is that HP partnered with Intel to create a broader, more modern, 64-bit chip architecture that everyone would inevitably move to, and what Itanium has been relegated to is exactly the same market niche that IBM's mainframes and, to a certain extent its i-based Power Systems proprietary midrange computers, have been pushed into.

To read the entire article from The Register: Click here.

Itanium Aims for the Mainstream

2009-05-04T00:00:00-07:00

With a growing number of members and applications, the Itanium Solutions Alliance wants to expand out of its niche.

May 4, 2009 By: Andy Patrizio

The Intel Itanium processor has enjoyed a comfortable niche in the mission-critical, high-performance market. But a collection of hardware, operating system and app vendors who are banking on the platform wants to see it move out of that small, albeit vital spot.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) said it's enjoying growing membership and app support, noting that year-over-year sales are increasing while other architectures, including x86, have contracted recently.

Asia has proven particularly strong, with Japan up 29 percent and the rest of Asia up 40 percent. Japan has three huge vendors in Hitachi, NEC and Fujitsu pushing Itanium, Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the ISA, told InternetNews.com. At the same time, the rest of Asia is a big proponent of big iron systems like Itanium and mainframes, she said.

To read the full article from InternetNews.com, click here.

HP Puts More �Up� in Uptime

2009-04-17T00:00:00-07:00

Company sets new standards for system availability with updated mission-critical computing software

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 17, 2009

HP today unveiled enhancements to its HP Serviceguard Solutions software and HP-UX 11i operating environment designed to maximize server availability for customers with 24/7 demands.

Targeting the mission-critical computing market, HP Serviceguard A.11.19 features online reconfiguration, integrated workload balancing and predictable performance as a system scales, assuring customers that the system will be available whenever they need it.

The latest version of HP-UX 11i has been optimized for blade systems, the industry’s fastest growing server infrastructure.(1) This adds the automation and management benefits of HP-UX 11i to the cost reduction, management and performance features of HP BladeSystem infrastructure.

For the last three years, HP has been the highest-ranking systems vendor in the Availability and Clustering Software (ACS) market, based on IDC’s annual report on ACS revenue.(2) HP Serviceguard high-availability software for HP-UX 11i Unix systems contributed strongly to HP’s ranking in the market, including sales of HP Serviceguard software licenses and support.

“We have significantly improved the performance of our data center while reducing costs by consolidating four standalone servers with a mixed operating environment to just two HP blades with a single operating environment,” said Jim Gross, director of IT Operations at AAR Corporation, a product and service provider to the aerospace and defense industries. “Standardizing on HP-UX 11i v3 across our environment has made system administration simple and cost-effective, while HP Integrity blades provide the form factor needed to consolidate.”

Continuous service-level availability
The HP Serviceguard Solutions portfolio, part of the HP Virtual Server Environment suite of software, is tightly integrated with HP-UX and Linux to protect mission-critical applications from downtime caused by maintenance, human error or infrastructure failures.

Additional updates to the HP Serviceguard Solutions portfolio offer the following benefits:

    * Restores services 83 percent faster(3) than the previous version. With Serviceguard, the performance level does not degrade even as the server cluster grows.
    * Eliminates 100 percent of planned downtime associated with typical cluster maintenance and configuration. Customers can add or delete resources or change parameters of an application package online while the application continues to run.
    * Minimizes recovery time from hours to as little as two minutes with the first production-proven solution for use with SAP® liveCache technology. The Serviceguard Extension for use with SAP applications improves supply chain availability.
    * Integrates workload balancing to ensure servers do not become overloaded after a failover -- the only high-availability clustering solution to do so.
    * Reduces administration costs by up to 25 percent(4) through a time-saving graphical display of dependencies between applications for intuitive management.
    * Improves the security of privacy data and allows for network growth with full compliance of IPv6 as well as mixed IPv4 and IPv6 environments. This is required by U.S. and Japanese government agencies.

“Twenty-five years of UNIX leadership, coupled with the longest publicly available UNIX roadmap in the industry, ensures that HP-UX is the operating environment of choice for customers,” said Brian Cox, director, Software Planning and Marketing, Business Critical Systems, HP. “This new version of HP-UX will enable customers to better handle orders for new business and reduce the costs of their technology infrastructures.”

More information about HP Serviceguard is available at www.hp.com/go/serviceguardnow.

Automation and management to improve uptime
The HP--UX 11i v3 Update 4 operating system offers new benefits through automation and simplified management, including:

    * Reduces deployment times from days to hours for high-bandwidth replicated servers through e-delivery, which enables downloads of the HP-UX 11i system software.
    * Up to 50 percent reduction of the planned downtime typically required to upgrade from older HP-UX 11i v3 releases through Online Operating System Update. New software versions can now be installed online.
    * Reduces energy costs per processor through Green Active Processors. This is achieved by dynamically controlling the power required for active processors based on workload requirements.
    * Protects sensitive data by overwriting and erasing disks with Disk Scrub.

In addition, the combination of HP-UX 11i and HP Integrity servers with Intel® Itanium® processors delivers the reliability, availability and scalability required by customers with mission-critical workloads.

“HP’s investment in UNIX-level data and application redundancy, online mobility and system failover with HP-UX 11i v3, combined with Intel’s investment in processor-level RAS features, make HP Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i extremely flexible and reliable for mission-critical workloads,” said Rory McInerney, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, and director, Enterprise Microprocessor Group, Intel. “Our joint work pays real dividends for our customers.”

More information about HP-UX 11i is available at www.hp.com/go/hpux11inow.

Availability
HP Serviceguard A.11.19 solutions and HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4 are available worldwide. Additional pricing information is available from local HP representatives.

About HP
HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

(1) “Meeting Mission-Critical Computing Requirements with Blade Servers,” Jean S. Bozman and Matthew Eastwood, IDC, February 2009.

(2) Based on revenue. “IDC Worldwide Availability and Clustering Software 2007 Vendor Shares,” IDC Doc. No. 215881, December 2008.

(3) As shown in HP Labs testing.

(4) As shown by HP Labs testing, system administrators now have greatly increased application reliability and predictability of cluster resources, while spending up to 25 percent less time administering those resources.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2009 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2008. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

To read the original copy of the release, click here.

Oracle and HP Deliver World Record Multi-Node Result With SPECjAppServer2004 Benchmark

2009-04-14T00:00:00-07:00

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/

News Facts
    * Today, Oracle announced world record multi-node SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark results for Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware.(1)
    * The combination of Oracle WebLogic Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database 11g on mission-critical HP Integrity server blades running HP-UX 11i v3 delivered the record-breaking results, further demonstrating Oracle Fusion Middleware's leadership in Java application server
      performance and scalability.
    * With this result, Oracle surpasses the best IBM WebSphere multi-node result with IBM DB2 by delivering more than 17 percent greater performance per core. (2)

Benchmark Details
    * Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R 3 together with Oracle Database 11g achieved 26,655.32 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (jAppServer Operations Per Second). Oracle WebLogic Server was running on 16 HP Integrity BL870c server blades, each with four Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor 9100 series (1.6 GHz). The database server was running on an HP Integrity Superdome server with 64 Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor 9100 series (1.6 GHz) and HP StorageWorks 8100 Enterprise Virtual Arrays. Both application server and database tiers were running HP-UX 11i v3.
    * For more than five years, Oracle has submitted record-setting application server benchmarks on a broad range of hardware and software platforms. Oracle is the performance and price/performance leader in multiple SPECjAppServer 2001(3) and SPECjAppServer2002(4) benchmark categories and also holds the world records for best performance and price/performance in the Ecperf (5) benchmark of J2EE application servers reported in July 2002.
    * SPECjAppServer2004 is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of a representative J2EE application and each of the components that make up the application environment, including hardware, application server software, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers and the system network. For more information, visit http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/.

Supporting Quote
    * "Oracle WebLogic Server continues to achieve world record benchmark results, further validating why it is the application server of choice for enterprises around the world," said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president, Systems Technology, Oracle. "Oracle Fusion Middleware, with Oracle WebLogic Server delivers unprecedented performance and scalability in a comprehensive, complete and integrated platform, enabling customers to improve IT efficiencies."

Supporting Resources
    * Oracle Benchmarks
    * Oracle Fusion Middleware
    * Oracle WebLogic Server
    * Oracle Database 11g

About Oracle
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest business software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SPEC, SPECjAppServer are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All results from www.spec.org as of 4/09/2009:

1 Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R 3 on HP. 16 HP Integrity BL870c server blades, each with four dual-core Intel(R) Itanium(R) 1.6 GHz processors, (128 cores), 26,655.32 JOPS@Standard. (208 JOPS per core).

2 WebSphere Application Server V7 on 16 IBM xSeries BladeCenter HS21, each with Quad Core Intel Xeon X5470 3.3 GHz processors, (128 cores), 22,634.13 JOPS@Standard (177 JOPS per core).

3 Sun Microsystems SunFire V1280 with Oracle9i Application Server, 521.86Bops/min@Std, $1,133.64/BBops (Best performance SPECjAppServer 2001 Dual Node category). Oracle9i AS Release 2 Standard Edition on HP ProLiant DL360, 183.33 BBops/min@Std, $325.13/BBops (Best price performance SPECjAppServer2001 Dual Node category). Oracle9iAS Release 2 on HP rp8400 Cluster, 2,529.10 BBops, $1342.74/Bbops (Best performance SPECjAppServer2001 MultipleNode category). Oracle9iAS Release 2 on HP ProLiant ML530G2 Cluster, 558.85 BBops/min@Std, $389.66/BBops (Best price performance SPECjAppServer2001MultipleNode category). Source: http://www.spec.org. For more information regarding SPECjAppServer2001 results, please visit: http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2001/results/jAppServer2001.html.

4 Fujitsu-Siemens Computers' PRIMEPOWER 450/2500, Oracle Application Server 10g: 5,991.73 TOPS@MultipleNode, 654.20 Euros TOPS@MultipleNode (Best Overall Performance Result, SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark).

5 Sun Fire 3800 cluster with Oracle9i AS Release 2, 61,862.77 BBops/min@Std, $28/BBops (Best Overall Performance, ECperf benchmark). HP DL360G2 cluster with Oracle9i AS Release 2, 24,639.37 BBops/min@Std, $5/BBops (Best Overall price/performance, ECperf benchmark). For more information regarding ECperf benchmark results, please visit: http://web.archive.org/web/20050306014256/ecperf.theserverside.com/ecperf/index.jsp?page=results/performance.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGO)

SOURCE Oracle

To read the original release, click here.

HP Takes Data Management to New Heights

2009-04-04T00:00:00-07:00

Company’s enterprise data warehouse surpasses milestones in users, queries and system size

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 2, 2009

HP today announced it has achieved significant milestones in its enterprise data warehouse, making it the largest of its kind in the world and one that serves as an example of the business intelligence possible with today’s technology.

More than 35,000 HP employees are currently using the enterprise data warehouse, an electronic repository that enables users to load, store, retrieve, analyze and manage company information. The system, an implementation of the company’s HP Neoview commercial offering, executes more than 300,000 quarterly business queries with the capability to more than triple in usage.

Consolidating numerous data marts into a single enterprise data warehouse was one of the initiatives that HP identified in 2005 as part of its efforts to transform the company’s IT organization. Since then, HP has more than halved its IT operating costs. Altogether, HP has retired more than 700 data marts, leading to a 70 percent reduction in operating expenses in its business-intelligence operations.

HP’s internal enterprise data warehouse initiative demonstrates how customers can create a more simple and dependable IT structure. HP Neoview is now running in dozens of companies that represent more than $1 trillion in revenue. These customers are able to use HP Neoview’s business intelligence to analyze massive amounts of information in seconds to make better business decisions.

“One of our missions is to provide good, timely information to users so they can make more-informed business decisions,” said Randy Mott, HP executive vice president and chief information officer. “We’ve implemented and are growing what we know to be the first true enterprise data warehouse anywhere in the world, where all company information is available.”

HP’s enterprise data warehouse is built on HP’s flagship data warehousing product, HP Neoview. Based on proven NonStop technology, HP Neoview provides an integrated environment for utilizing data across an enterprise.

Users can perform various kinds of analysis appropriate for their business. For example, Neoview helps retailers understand their customers’ buying patterns or the effectiveness of their merchandise assortment. It also helps manufacturers organize data so they can calculate their costs and gross margins uniformly across different regions.

Now running on standards-based technology, HP Neoview scales easily and can be re-provisioned as new technology arrives, helping customers reduce risk and lower their total cost of ownership.

To fully realize the benefits of its enterprise data warehouse transformation, HP invested in core fundamentals, including programs on information governance, information quality and master data management, to create an integrated enterprise data management environment.

HP’s master data management strategy created common definitions for key business entities such as customer, product and location. This provided an enterprise view across business units of complex information relationships that existed across HP. HP IT teamed with business stakeholders across the organization to focus on data timeliness, consistency and quality, and to develop an ongoing plan for information governance.

The governance model effectively positions HP to manage business, technology, reporting and analytic resources in response to rapidly changing market demands. These initiatives laid the foundation for ongoing benefits provided by the enterprise data warehouse platform and HP’s approach to managing information as a corporate asset.

The HP enterprise data warehouse boasts 384 two-way Intel® Itanium® servers (768 RX262X processors), each with 12 gigabytes of memory. Total storage exceeds one petabyte.(1)

HP’s initiative to transform its data warehousing environment is part of a broader investment it is making in business intelligence, including world-class expertise. Through its central research arm, HP Labs, HP is transforming business intelligence from batch reporting for enterprise back offices to pervasive, interactive services that are delivered into online business processes. This enables an enterprise data warehouse to handle both simple and complex queries with faster response times.

“Business intelligence is a key priority for us and we’re sharing with customers our success at getting good, actionable information for better decision making,” said Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president, Software and Solutions, HP. “HP Neoview has played a key role in HP’s IT transformation, and many customers I talk to have the same challenges we had in terms of the need for real-time access to accurate information.”

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

(1) 1 petabyte equals 1,000 terabytes or 1,0005 bytes.

Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2009 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2008. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

To read the original release, click here.

HP Leads in Africa

2009-04-03T00:00:00-07:00

A statement from the company says it managed to increase its market share in the vendor sector by 5.5%, to 38.2%. The major contributors to its growth in Africa include its Itanium-based Integrity platform, which overtook its mainframe platform to reach 19.5% market share and continuing growth of its blade server in the market.

“Africa is a strategic growth market for HP and it is great to see our strong performances across the businesses,” says Fortuin.

To read the full article from ITweb, click here.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 Linux Itanium Agent is Available

2009-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

Immediately after we ship a new release of Enterprise Manager Grid Control, we always get a ton on questions on the availability of the various O/S port. 10gR5 was of no exception. Our mailboxes were flooded with inquiries from both the Oracle field and customers.

The good news is that first agent port has arrived.

Grid Control agent is now available for Linux on Itanium. You will find it as part of the mass agent deployment package that is available on Oracle Technology Network (OTN) as well as eDelivery.

Here is the OTN URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/oem/index.html

The even better news is that we have published a My Oracle Support (a.k.a. Metalink) note to disclose the port release schedule. Look for note 793512.1. Publishing release date is always a tricky proposition. On one hand, it makes sense to do it because customers want to have advanced notice in order to plan ahead. On the other hand, we don't want to over promise and under deliver. So take the dates for what they are. We are working hard to get all the ports out.

To read the original blog post, click here.

Clerity's Mainframe Rehosting Software Reduces IT Costs up to 70 Percent

2009-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

Latest UniKix release is the foundation for affordable BPM, SOA, and Web Services initiatives

CHICAGO, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Clerity Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of mainframe migration and modernization solutions, has introduced UniKix 11.0, the cornerstone of its growing portfolio of legacy optimization solutions. The latest release of Clerity's rehosting software offers greater choice in deployment platforms, advanced security options, and numerous innovations that make migrating online and batch application environments to cost-effective open systems servers even easier, thus shortening payback periods and increasing return on investment.

Retalix, a global provider of software solutions to retailers and distributors, is one Clerity customer already benefiting from UniKix 11.0 enhancements.

"Our customers are the top food retailers and distributors worldwide and have specialized requirements. Because UniKix 11.0 now supports multiple platforms including HP-UX on Itanium, we can offer greater choice to our base and are better equipped to their unique needs," said Rik Schrader, senior vice president, sales and marketing, supply chain division for Retalix. "By making it easy for us to appeal to a broader customer base, Clerity has helped us expand our market without rewriting application code."

Clerity's UniKix mainframe rehosting software provides a mission-critical environment for deploying mainframe CICS, IMS, IDMS, Adabas, Natural, and other legacy assets on open systems. By leveraging existing applications, skill sets, and data investments, Clerity technology reduces IT costs and optimizes legacy investments without sacrificing current functionality or introducing risk into the migration process. Once a rehosted platform is in place, subsequent modernization initiatives such as SOA integration, user-interface transformation, and selective business process management improvements can safely take place using software products such as Clerity Service Builder and Clerity Web Connect. The savings generated by rehosting is often applied to fund these transformational activities.

For nearly 20 years, UniKix has enabled organizations to reduce annual operating costs by as much as 70 percent. More than 1300 UniKix installations are deployed worldwide at commercial institutions such as NYSE Euronext, BNP Paribas, Medavie Blue Cross, and Volkswagen Mexico, as well as at government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Central Reserve Bank of Peru, and Deutsche Rentenversicherung.

In the 11.0 release, Clerity has enhanced the functionality of UniKix software in the following key areas:

Adding support for a wider range of operating system platforms, including HP Itanium IA64 systems running HP-UX11i versions 2 and 3; IBM POWER systems running AIX 5.3 and greater; Sun SPARC systems running Solaris 10 and greater; x86 or x64 systems running SuSE Linux Enterprise 10; and IBM System z mainframe systems running SuSE Linux Enterprise 9.
Offering advanced security features that match mainframe security options.
Improving batch processing to simplify the rehosting and administering of batch workloads on open systems.
Enhancing CICS compatibility for several online processing features.
Improving performance and resource management.

UniKix 11.0 rehosting software is available immediately. Detailed information on the new features in this release is available at http://www.clerity.com/unikix.

About Clerity Solutions, Inc.

Clerity is a leading, full-service provider of mainframe migration, modernization, and optimization solutions. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with offices worldwide, Clerity's service team and automated software solutions have facilitated hundreds of successful migrations. With over 15 years of experience and more than 1300 sites worldwide, Clerity is uniquely positioned to assist organizations through all aspects of legacy migration. For more information on Clerity visit http://www.clerity.com.

To read the original release, click here.

Novell releases SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

2009-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

Waltham, Mass.-based Novell Inc.'s release of SUSE Linux Enterprise(SLE)11 has a number of enhancements designed to help companies, during dire economic times, to cost-effectively run mission-critical applications in a mixed IT environment, regardless of the hardware or virtual platform, or cloud computing infrastructure.

SLE11 provides a common Linux framework across the enterprise, from the desktop to the data centre, "so organizations can deploy workloads wherever and however they choose," said Ross Chevalier, Toronto-based Novell Canada Ltd.'s president and chief technology officer.

The release runs "with near-native performance" on five major hardware platforms (x86-32, x86-64, Itanium, IBM Power and IBM System z), as well as on all major hypervisors (VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen). And, as service providers and vendors increasingly look to provide services in the cloud, SLE11 is also supported in initiatives like Amazon EC2.

To read the full article at Network World, click here.

Novell Ships SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

2009-03-24T00:00:00-07:00

Next-generation SUSE Linux Enterprise platform delivers cost-effective, mission-critical computing across the enterprise, including physical, virtual, appliance and cloud deployments

Novell today announced the availability of SUSE® Linux Enterprise 11, the operating system designed for the next-generation data center. As data centers become more heterogeneous, customers are demanding a cost-effective platform that can run their applications reliably and with high performance on any hardware platform and hypervisor as well as in appliances and cloud computing infrastructures. With SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, Novell is delivering the leading mission-critical Linux* platform to allow customers to economically deploy workloads wherever and however they choose, with complete support from Novell and its global partner ecosystem of solution and hardware providers and independent software vendors (ISVs).

“A recent survey1 conducted by IDC and sponsored by Novell confirmed that around 50 percent of IT executives are planning to increase their adoption of Linux server and desktop technologies this year because of the economic downturn,” said Jeff Jaffe, chief technology officer at Novell. “With the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, Novell is helping IT professionals save money while addressing other key issues identified in the survey, such as interoperability, support for mission-critical computing and the flexibility to deploy Linux in a wide range of environments.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 delivers innovations across the enterprise. The platform contains major enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and delivers two new extensions – SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono® Extension, the only product that enables customers to run fully supported Microsoft* .NET-based applications on Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, a clustering product that ensures uptime for mission-critical applications while slashing the cost of ownership for high availability. As the operating system for the next-generation IT infrastructure, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 was designed using three core themes: ubiquity, interoperability and mission-critical computing.

“As virtualization realizes its full potential and cloud computing begins to transform the data center, operating systems need to be engineered to enable these new solutions,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president at IDC. “By fully supporting physical, virtual, appliance and cloud computing models with SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell can help customers at each step in the evolution of the data center. For customers seeking an operating system that works with their existing IT infrastructure while reducing the cost of enterprise computing, Novell has delivered SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 and a comprehensive set of solutions for identity, security and systems management.”

World-class Partner Ecosystem
As part of a complete solution, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will be supported by Novell's global strategic partners – including Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle and SAP AG – and its entire ecosystem of solution, integration, hardware and software partners. Together, Novell with its partners deliver the world-class implementation, technical support and training services customers have come to expect. Novell has also invested significant resources in building an expansive independent software vendor application catalog for SUSE Linux Enterprise.

“SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 has been designed with both customers and partners in mind,” said Ken Simon, vice president of Sales, Enterico Division of Continental Resources. “We have collaborated with Novell to ensure our customer requirements have been reflected in the next generation of the product. Combined with the large ISV ecosystem surrounding the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, we can now deliver the complete, integrated solutions that our customers are seeking.”

Paul Miller, vice president of Marketing, Enterprise Servers and Storage at HP, said, “In today’s economy, customers find it increasingly important to reduce costs yet extract more value and flexibility from their technology environment. Deploying Linux for highly available core business applications is a reality that HP and Novell are delivering today on HP Integrity and ProLiant servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise.”
Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel Software and Services Group, and general manager, Systems Software Division, said, “From desktop to data center, for physical or virtual environments, and for the new wave of mobile devices and appliances, SUSE Linux Enterprise running on Intel processors provides the flexibility customers need. Intel is a strong supporter of Linux running demanding virtualized workloads in the enterprise, and we're very pleased to continue to support Novell with the launch of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.”

Ted MacLean, general manager of strategic alliances & licensing at Microsoft, said, “Customers place a very high value on the interoperability and strong technical cooperation between Microsoft and Novell, and the new release of SUSE Linux Enterprise continues that ground-breaking innovation. The scale and scope of the strategic agreement with Novell is unique, and provides customers with innovative solutions for mixed-source environments, both physical and virtual.”

Advanced Linux Management
Giving customers a powerful option to manage their Linux systems, Novell is also announcing today the availability of Novell® ZENworks® Linux Management 7.3, which extends policy-driven automation to SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Managing both desktop and server systems, ZENworks Linux Management makes it easy to deploy, manage and maintain Linux resources with advanced policies for desktops and servers. When used with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, ZENworks Linux Management enables customers to reduce the time and cost spent managing their IT infrastructure.

Ubiquity: Linux how you want it, where you want it
Customers need unparalleled flexibility from their operating systems. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 runs on the leading hardware platforms, including x86-32, x86-64, Itanium*, IBM* POWER* and IBM System z*. In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 has been optimized to run at near-native performance on all major hypervisors, including VMware* ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen*.

For deploying Linux in the cloud, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will be certified and supported in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Novell is collaborating with IBM to deliver SUSE Linux Enterprise 11-based virtual instances of IBM DB2*, Informix* Dynamic Server, WebSphere* sMash, IBM Lotus* Web Content Management and IBM WebSphere* Portal instances for cloud environments. Currently, customers deploying Linux desktops have been able to obtain SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop preloaded from leading hardware vendors, including Dell and HP. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, Novell will continue to bring desktop Linux ubiquity to the market across a variety of devices, including desktops, notebooks, netbooks, nettops and thin clients.

Many customers are removing complexity from their application deployment and management processes with virtual appliances – integrated images with a complete preconfigured suite including application, middleware and operating system. To continue to lead in this rapidly growing market, Novell is delivering SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS (Just enough Operating System) and a suite of tools that enables ISVs to assemble a virtual appliance with just the pieces of SUSE Linux Enterprise necessary to support their specific application. Uniquely, appliances that pass Novell's supportability algorithm will receive technical support for their custom JeOS configuration of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. More details on this program and the appliance construction toolkit will be released later this year.

Interoperability: Leverage existing IT investments
With SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, Novell continues to provide the most interoperable Linux solutions that leverage customers' existing IT investments. Thanks to its ground-breaking, five-year partnership with Microsoft, Novell has engineered SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 to work seamlessly with Microsoft Windows* in the areas of cross-platform virtualization, systems management, identity/directory federation, document compatibility, MoonlightTM (Microsoft Silverlight on Linux) and desktop accessibility for the disabled. In addition to new support for Silverlight, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 features the ability to play Windows multimedia file formats and the latest version of OpenOffice.org Novell Edition that supports a range of Microsoft Office file formats.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension is a new product that provides the first commercial support for the open source Mono project's application platform, enabling enterprises to seamlessly run .NET applications on Linux without having to recompile. SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension allows organizations to consolidate their .NET applications onto Linux, dramatically saving costs. Novell is also offering the SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension for customers performing mainframe-based workload consolidation. This allows them to run .NET-based applications on IBM System z, the first time this has been offered by any Linux vendor.

Mission-Critical Computing: Designed to support your most important business needs
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 enables customers to confidently migrate workloads from UNIX to Linux in order to build a low-cost, resilient infrastructure. SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension delivers an innovative, integrated suite of open source clustering technologies that help customers reduce unplanned downtime while providing an affordable alternative to expensive proprietary offerings. A new support infrastructure provides enhanced problem resolution to assist customers in resolving inquiries quickly and accurately.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 now supports swap over the NFS (Network File System) protocol to leverage remote storage for local server needs and avoid costly application downtime. In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 provides the fastest package update stack of any enterprise Linux distribution, with new technologies to automate and accelerate installing, removing, upgrading and configuring software packages. Delivering the new Xen 3.3 hypervisor, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 continues to set the standard for open source virtualization, with greater scalability, performance and security, enhanced power management and improved graphical capabilities.

Later this year, Novell plans to release the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, which will leverage the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 code base to reduce latency and increase predictability and reliability of time-sensitive, mission-critical applications.
“Office Depot chose to standardize on SUSE Linux Enterprise in an effort to reduce the complexity of our systems and control costs, while maintaining superior performance for our global systems,” said Tim Toews, senior vice president and chief information officer of Office Depot. “As we have moved more applications and volume to commodity platforms, SUSE Linux Enterprise has been able to scale to support our business needs.”

Availability
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension and Novell ZENworks Linux Management 7.3 are available now. SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS will be available in April and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension will be available in the second quarter of this year. Later in 2009, Novell plans to release updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension and SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client. For more information, visit www.novell.com/SUSE11presskit.

Global Data Center Evolution Tour
Beginning today, Novell is featuring SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 in major cities around the world as part of its data center evolution tour. The first events will be in Boston and Irvine, Calif., and will also showcase solutions from PlateSpin® Workload Management and Novell Business Service Management. For more information and to register for the tour, visit www.novell.com/events/tours/datacenter.

To read the original release, click here.

HP Expands Integrity NonStop Server Line, Delivering Unparalleled Performance at Low Cost

2009-03-16T00:00:00-07:00

HP today announced the new, entry-level HP Integrity NonStop NS2000 server family, which delivers high performance and fault-tolerance at the lowest cost available for a multi-core Integrity NonStop system.

The NS2000 is ideal for small and midsized organizations in the healthcare, financial services and telecommunications industries, as well as customers in emerging markets. It allows organizations to cost-effectively meet the high availability and scalability of their business. Designed with the full benefits of HP NonStop technology, the NS2000 family paves the way for future growth without the worry of application compatibility.

"There is a large segment of smaller enterprise customers that tends to be priced out of the market for high-end, fault-tolerant servers," said Jim Johnson, chief executive officer of the research company Standish Group. "For those customers, the NS2000 server offers significant value and additional choice for application availability and fault tolerance."

The new rack-mounted NS2000 servers are simple to manage and fully leverage the power of Intel® Itanium® multi-core processors to deliver:

* Double the performance capacity of previous NonStop entry-class systems.
* 24/7 data availability and real-time access to critical business applications.
* A cost-effective development and test platform for HP Integrity NonStop BladeSystem customers. The NS2000 closely matches their production environments with a common software and I/O infrastructure.
* A target migration platform for current HP Integrity NonStop S-series customers. The NS2000 runs the same applications, offering complete investment protection by extending existing solution capabilities.

"Customers with limited IT resources are looking for cost-effective solutions that quickly and easily deliver the fault-tolerant capabilities they need to minimize risk of downtime," said Winston Prather, general manager, NonStop, HP. "The NS2000 Integrity family delivers the performance and reliability our customers need right out of the box, at a very competitive price point."

The HP Integrity NonStop NS2000 server family is available worldwide in a variety of configurations based on specific customer requirements. Customers have a choice of four- or eight-core hardware base bundles, 8 gigabytes (GB) or 16 GB memory per processor, as well as AC and DC powered versions.

For the original release at HP.com, click here.

HP Launches Entry-level Itanium Servers

2009-03-16T00:00:00-07:00

The servers include Intel's Itanium chips, which have an advanced RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) feature to reduce data corruption and improve performance reliability. Advanced RAS features can correct errors that may occur when data is being crunched on a processor.

"The Integrity platform has more robust RAS ... than x86 processor servers," said Randy Meyer, director of NonStop product management at HP. HP also bundles its own software to ensure better system reliability, Meyer said.

To read the full article at PCWorld.com, click here.

Mainframes and Itanium grow, x86 slows

2009-03-16T00:00:00-07:00

The non-x86 server segment was bailed out by HP Itanium and IBM mainframe servers in 2008. While RISC servers did not see any growth, we saw robust growth for Itanium pushed by HP. The company [HP] has successfully transformed RISC customers to the Itanium platform including some new sales. RISC was not as popular a choice as in the past. Overall, the RISC server market grew by a mere 1.5% in factory revenue in CY 2008 [as per Gartner], the worst in the history of the Indian server market. SMBs are not aggressive anymore when it comes to non-x86 servers. The only silver lining for non-x86 servers in 2008 came from big iron [mainframe] deals, courtesy IBM. It was a fantastic year for the mainframe business as the company reached a milestone by selling 6-7 System z mainframe servers. Some of the big names that bought zSeries were Cognizant Technologies, Anna University, TCS, ELCOT [ELCOT is believed to have bought two System z servers for setting up its data centers]. Overall, as per Gartner's estimate the non-x86 server market is expected to have grown by 17% to $327.6 million in CY 2008 from $280 million in CY 2007.

As per IDC, the non-x86 server market by customer revenue grew by 6.96% to $378 million in 2008 over 2007.

Government emerged the largest spender on non-x86 servers if you consider those mainframe deals. That apart, education alongside, telecom, BFSI and to lesser extent manufacturing were seen as key consumers of non-x86 servers.

Santanu Ghose, Country Manager, Business Critical Systems & NonStop servers Technology Solutions Group, HP India Sales Pvt Ltd., said, "We saw telecom and BFSI as the biggest spenders on high-end non-x86 servers for our Superdome and NonStop servers as they continue to expand their subscriber base. Telecom in particular, where subscribers are talking more and putting a lot of pressure on the telco's backend infrastructure-every minute of call holding means that the telco needs to expand capacity. Further there will 3-4 new operators entering the Indian market in 2009."

Referring to Reliance ADA, Ghose said that it has bought HP NonStop servers that the company is using for its all important Home Location Register (HLR) that create huge databases that need to be analysed for strategic business reasons. Similarly, BSNL bought its Superdomes to support its GSM expansion as well as for Call-Details-Record (CDR). Vodafone, Idea and BPL were other telcos that bought Superdomes.

In BFSI, most of the PSU banks be it Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, SBI [largest users of Superdome in APAC], Andhra Bank, UCO and UBI went on a shopping spree for Superdomes for decision support systems, billing application and CRM systems. IOCL, ONGC and BPCL continued to buy Superdomes. LIC and National insurance also contributed to the growth.

Ghose added, "We noticed sluggishness in the mid-market segment although there were a couple of SAP deals.

To read the full article at Express Computer, click here.

GCN honors public-sector IT innovations with Best of FOSE awards

2009-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

More than 65 companies submitted a total of 115 new products for consideration during this year's competition. Winning products were selected across a broad range of categories, including Best of Show, which went to Lenovo Group for its ThinkPad W700ds.

Category award recipients include...

Security Software – Secure64, Secure64 DNS Signer.

To read the entire article at GCN.com, click here.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Launches Third Annual Innovation Awards Program

2009-02-26T00:00:00-07:00

Now accepting entries showcasing excellence in mission-critical computing and humanitarian efforts

PORTLAND, Ore. - February 26, 2009 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is pleased to announce that the call for entries is now open for the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. In their third year, the Innovation Awards honor unique and impactful work that relies on Intel® Itanium-based solutions. The Alliance will accept entries through May 13, 2009, and winners will be revealed at an exclusive event during the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"In these challenging times, it's an honor to host an industry awards program that turns the spotlight on developers, data centers and IT organizations and recognizes the dedicated professionals who work relentlessly to break new ground in computing," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Alliance. "We hope the growing community of Itanium users will again seize on this opportunity to share with the industry the compelling and often world-changing initiatives they've brought to life on Itanium-based systems."

The Alliance hosts the annual Innovation Awards in alignment with the organization's mission to accelerate the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Developers, enterprises, small and mid-sized businesses, and research institutions are all strongly encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to earn highly visible recognition for their work on Itanium-based systems.

This year, four categories will recognize unique and impactful work using Itanium-based solutions in the areas of Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive Applications and Humanitarian Impact. Winners will be chosen by an independent panel of judges selected for their leadership in innovation and relevant category expertise. The winner in the Humanitarian Impact category - which comes with a $50,000 prize for continuing efforts in their chosen endeavor - will be announced in July, and other category winners are to be revealed live at the Innovation Awards Celebration on September 23, 2009, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Entrants are welcome to submit to one or more categories, but are required to provide a unique application of an Itanium-based solution for each entry:

• The Mission-Critical Data category recognizes the successful implementation of a database or data warehousing solution that achieves outstanding results;
• Organizations making or leading the transition from a mainframe-based infrastructure to one that takes advantage of Itanium's open architecture framework will be considered for the Data Center Modernization category;
• The Computationally Intensive Applications category focuses on organizations who have applied their systems to tackle massive workloads which demand consistently high performance and scalable shared resources;
• The Humanitarian Impact category award, and $50,000 cash prize to support the winning organization's work, will be bestowed upon the most innovative implementation of applications running on Itanium-based systems where the systems demonstrate a positive impact for humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts. Examples of eligible uses include, but are not limited to, biosciences research, natural disaster modeling and prediction, and resource management.

All entries will be evaluated on a scorecard-based system that considers key factors in the solution's deployment, and finalists will be notified of their status in May. The program's 2008 winners were the University of Houston Bioinformatics Research Lab from Houston, Texas; S7 Software Solutions, headquartered in Bangalore, India; and Protégésoft Pte. Ltd. of Singapore.

Key facts

• Entries open: February 26, 2009
• Entries close: May 13, 2009
• Humanitarian Impact category winner awarded: July 2009
• Award event: Sept. 23, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Follow the awards and submit entries at http://www.itaniumsolutions.org/itanium_innovation_awards/ and at the Itanium Solutions Alliance blog: http://blog.itaniumsolutions.org/

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

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Silicon Graphics Awarded $40 Million DOD Contract

2009-02-24T00:00:00-07:00

SGI Captures Six of Seven Awards Under HPC Modernization Program with Altix ICE Systems Based on New Intel Nehalem Processors

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Feb. 24, 2009) - The Department of Defense (DOD) selected Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC), through its wholly owned subsidiary Silicon Graphics Federal, Inc., for six of seven awards as part of the agency's Technology Insertion 2009 (TI-09) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

The multi-year $40 million agreement engages Silicon Graphics to provide world-class compute and storage solutions, along with options for service and support. The systems will be installed at leading defense research and development sites throughout the United States, including the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).

"Silicon Graphics is honored to provide these premier DOD facilities with the high-performance compute, storage and service solutions needed to handle some of the most advanced computing challenges in the world," said Silicon Graphics CEO Robert "Bo" Ewald. "Securing these TI-09 awards required Silicon Graphics to prevail in a competitive evaluation involving numerous major HPC vendors. As we move forward with implementation and long-term support of these solutions, we'll work to ensure that DOD researchers and programs get the most from them."

Silicon Graphics captured the lion's share of 2009 HPCMP program contracts by demonstrating the superior performance of its SGI® Altix® ICE 8200 systems based on the next-generation Intel® Xeon® processors (codenamed Nehalem). Complementing the extreme performance of the Altix ICE platform is a storage solution based on SGl® InfiniteStorage 4600 designed handle the DOD's tremendous I/O requirements efficiently and reliably.

Contributing to the selection of Silicon Graphics were usability factors associated with the Altix ICE systems and Silicon Graphics' long track record of delivering rapidly deployable solutions for the most demanding HPC environments. With a tightly integrated and modular design that simplifies deployment, the SGI Altix ICE platform allows customers to realize a return on their investment sooner than is possible with traditional supercomputer systems. The company also showed it could meet the power and space limitations of certain DOD sites, without sacrificing performance.

"To achieve breakthroughs in designing and testing next-generation materials and weapons systems, DOD researchers require high-performance systems that are scalable and reliable," said Cray Henry, director of the HPCMP for the Department of Defense. "Throughout our evaluation process, Silicon Graphics clearly demonstrated that it more than met these criteria. In addition, the DOD and HPCMP share a long history with Silicon Graphics. These major contracts will extend our partnership for years to come."

Silicon Graphics will equip the Army Research Laboratory DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (ARL DSRC) in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC DSRC) in Vicksburg, Miss., with SGI Altix ICE 8200 systems based on the future Intel® Nehalem processors integrated with SGI® InfinteStorage 4600 systems. Each of these centers provides computational resources to the entire DoD science and technology and test and evaluation communities. All systems are expected to be installed and accepted by Sept. 15, 2009.

Silicon Graphics will also supply solutions under the HPCMP's Dedicated High Performance Computing (HPC) Project Investments (DHPI) which provides DoD sites with mid-sized systems for mission-critical projects with unique requirements that cannot be performed at a DSRC. These include:

* Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio
* Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee
* Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Bethesda, Md.

AFRL and AEDC will leverage SGI Altix ICE 8200 technologies while NSWC will rely on SGI Altix 4700 and SGI® InfiniteStorage 200 solutions.

As the engine driving the DOD's new SGI Altix ICE systems, the Intel Nehalem processor is designed to deliver unprecedented performance and dynamic scalability.
"Driven by the energy-efficient performance of Intel's Xeon and Itanium processor families, SGI's computers provide DOD engineers ideal HPC systems for creating, simulating, visualizing and analyzing applications," said Richard Dracott, Intel general manager of High Performance Computing.

To read the original release at SGI.com, click here.

Server Consolidation Boosts Utilization Rates for Atlanta's Fulton County

2009-02-23T00:00:00-07:00

Fulton County partnered with Fujitsu to acquire blade server technology and use the power of VMware virtualization software. The DOIT consolidated the old servers onto Fujitsu's Primergy series server blades. The IT department also purchased Fujitsu's Itanium Primequest servers, which use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support Oracle databases.

"There were a lot of surprises [in testing and training] because we were used to dealing with stand-alone servers that were a pretty much a known quantity to us, and we understood how they connected to the rest of the infrastructure," Terrell said.

The county discovered that not all systems were candidates for virtualization because some crucial systems aren't well suited for the virtual frontier. Dickie said applications like the Kronos time-keeping program are too specialized and require connections or hardware that won't work in virtual environments.

Also, the county's interactive voice-response (IVR) systems can't be virtualized because they need unique hardware to interface with phone systems. These IVR systems need access to the primary-rate interface, which is a digital network that sends voice and other data over digital or nondigital telephone lines.

Manuel Martull, Fujitsu's senior director of server marketing, said Fulton County's upgrade and consolidation allowed IT personnel to maximize its server usage.

"They noticed that some of these servers were significantly underutilized, so the utilization rates were in the 30 to 40 percent [range], and by virtualizing, some of these environments now can run the multiple applications within a single server and boost that utilization rate up to about 80 percent," he said.

Martull said the Primergy equipment will provide the county with dependable operability with very few failures over time.

"Once you purchase a Primergy system, it is expected to perform without failures for up to six years," Martull said, which would be a significant improvement compared to the server equipment Fulton had before the consolidation. "Some of the older systems that they had, I think they were 7-year-old systems."

To read the entire article at Government Technology, click here.

UK's Institute of Cancer Research and Silicon Graphics Establish Long-term Alliance to Design and Outfit World-Class Network Biology Lab

2009-02-17T00:00:00-07:00

Pioneering Studies of 'Cellular Networks' to Put Unprecedented Demands on Compute, Storage and Visualization Solutions

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (February 17, 2009) — As part of a multi-year collaboration, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC) today announced it will provide the high-productivity solutions needed to outfit a new world-class cancer research facility in the United Kingdom.

Silicon Graphics has been selected to equip, over the next five or more years, an initiative in integrative network biology at London's renowned The Institute of Cancer Research. Expected to open in spring 2009, the initiative in integrative network biology at The Institute will arm a team of cancer research pioneers with advanced compute, storage and visualization solutions built, implemented and optimized by Silicon Graphics.

Unlike mainstream cancer research, which usually focuses on the structure and behavior of individual genes, proteins or cells, The Institute's effort aims to study how networks of cancer cells interact with each other and surrounding tissues to metastasize or spread throughout the body.

By modeling and simulating how cancer cells interact within the larger biological network, The Institute's researchers hope to achieve breakthroughs that lead to new drugs or treatments that prevent metastasis — the stage when cancer can turn deadly.

"Studying the dynamics of cellular networks will put unprecedented demands on our technology infrastructure, generating enormous data sets that must be processed rapidly, visualized interactively, and accessed on the fly," said Dr. Rune Linding, head of the Cellular and Molecular Logic Team at The Institute of Cancer Research.

The Institute intends to make use of the full range of Silicon Graphics solutions and services.

"The Institute will take a truly innovative approach to cancer research, studying how cancer develops within the complex human biological network," said Dr. Eng Lim Goh, chief technology officer at Silicon Graphics. "We are looking forward to a long and productive relationship with this remarkable institution, as we collaborate to design a technology infrastructure that accelerates insight by giving researchers new tools in this battle for humanity."

"Intel is proud to join with Silicon Graphics in outfitting The Institute with the world's most scalable compute systems based on Intel® Xeon® and Intel® Itanium® processors," said Richard Dracott, General Manager of High Performance Computing at Intel. "This long-term alliance addresses The Institute's unique need for a collaborative relationship that will continue to enable innovation for years to come. As The Institute raises the watermark on cancer research, Intel stands ready to provide the computational engines for that innovation."

The Institute of Cancer Research
The Institute of Cancer Research is one of the world's leading cancer research centers with expert scientists working on cutting edge research The Institute marks its 100 years of world leading research into cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The Institute is a charity that relies on voluntary income. The Institute is one of the world's most cost-effective major cancer research organizations with over 95p in every £ directly supporting research. For more information visit www.icr.ac.uk.

Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC), is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI delivers a complete range of high-performance server and storage solutions along with industry-leading professional services and support that enable its customers to overcome the challenges of complex data-intensive workflows and accelerate breakthrough discoveries, innovation and information transformation. SGI solutions help customers solve their computing challenges whether it's enhancing the quality of life through drug research, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars and airplanes, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or helping enterprises manage large data. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

Note: The main number for SGI corporate headquarters is 408-524-1980.

© 2009 SGI. All rights reserved. SGI, the SGI cube, Altix and the SGI logo are registered trademarks of SGI in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Intel, Xeon and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

SGI Altix Systems Make Giant Leap to 21 Terabytes of Globally Addressable Memory at Customer Sites

2009-02-10T00:00:00-07:00

Silicon Graphics Ultra Large Shared Memory Capability Enables New Algorithms and Boosts Productivity for Critical Applications

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (February 10, 2008) - Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC) is in a category all by itself when it comes to massive globally shared main memory and globally addressable memory on SGI® Altix® 4700 systems. With numerous installations in the 4TB range, and a number more in the 8TB range, the groundbreaking scalability of SGI systems extends to 21TB of globally addressable main memory at customer sites. This is over five times the size of memory that other vendors can offer today. The system is designed to accommodate 128 terabytes of globally shared memory under the control of a single instance of the Linux operating system! The system may also be partitioned among multiple instances of Linux and provide globally addressable shared memory among OS instances via SGI's unique NUMAlink® interconnect technology.

Large global shared memory saves time: time-to-results, time-to-solution and time-to-innovation. It significantly simplifies application development and debugging for all multi-threaded applications but is mandatory for several categories of applications including memory-resident data base applications with uses in Internet data centers and transaction processing, as well as those based on "graph theory," an important area of mathematics with uses in defense and homeland security applications, multi-disciplinary science, and data assimilation.

"There are applications emerging in the market that require extremely large shared memory: one such application area is graph theory," said Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Silicon Graphics, Inc. "In addition, the study of complicated networks and relationships between objects in business or scientific computing require the ability to put the entire database or model into memory to analyze and/or compute. Some of these applications demand an SGI Altix system, which is the only server that offers sufficiently large shared memory capability to achieve such large scale endeavors."

The power of SGI's largest global shared memory and globally addressable memory capabilities has been adopted by a number of strategic customers for their projects, including:

* Northrop Grumman Corporation recently added two SGI Altix 4700 systems, each with 128 Intel® Itanium® processors that leverages the unique memory-only blade design of the Altix family of systems, and 5TB of shared main memory. Northrop Grumman now has a total of 11TB of global shared memory on SGI Altix systems at this secure site.
* At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Force Research Laboratory uses an SGI Altix 4700 system packed with 4,608 Intel Itanium processors in a single supercomputer equipped with 20 TB of globally addressable memory and 440 TB of usable disk space. Globally addressable memory means applications can be shared across various operating systems via SGI NUMAlink. One of the largest computers in the Department of Defense, the SGI resource helps DoD researchers to design faster, reduce risk by increasing the quality of modeling and simulation, and support an intensifying effort to develop "game-changing" computational science and engineering applications. The Air Force Research Laboratory is part of the DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), which provides the supercomputer services, high-speed network communications, and computational science expertise that enables Army, Air Force, and Navy laboratories and test centers to conduct a wide range of focused research, development, and test activities.

The DoD's SGI Altix system offers major advantages to an array of projects, such as computational fluid dynamics studies designed to reduce the risks posed by turbulence on aircraft carrier decks. With access to more power and memory from the Altix system, DoD researchers can more quickly and accurately modify carrier designs that minimize the ship's airwake - and with it, the danger to pilots.
* The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre Munich (LRZ), which houses one of Germany's National Supercomputer Systems, employs a record-breaking SGI Altix 4700 system. Starting in late 2006, the first Altix 4700 installation marked the completion of LRZ's Phase I deployment, which incorporated 2,048 Intel Itanium processors with 17 TB of globally addressable memory. The LRZ system operates all 4,096 processors as a unified platform that enables applications to directly address all 17 TB of memory. In 2007, a 4,864 Intel Itanium processor system at LRZ with slightly over 39 TB of globally addressable memory completed Phase II. Available to scientists in Germany and Europe, the SGI Altix system is hard at work solving increasingly complex simulations in physics and astrophysics, materials research, fluid dynamics, chemistry, geosciences and biological sciences.

"Intel has a successful track record delivering highly reliable and scalable Itanium processors enabling mission critical, data intensive solutions," said Susan Tauzer, Director of Mission Critical Platform Marketing, Intel Corporation. "SGI's Altix HPC system based on the Intel Itanium architecture delivers an innovative tera-scale computing solution for scientific research and business analytics."

To read the original release at SGI.com, click here.

With Silicon Graphics, Roshydromet Improves Accuracy and Speed of Weather Forecasts to Save Lives and Property

2009-02-09T00:00:00-07:00

Russia's National Weather Service Boosts Computing Power by 10,000 Times to Model Weather and Climate in Greater Detail

SUNNYVALE, Calif., (February 9, 2009) - Around the world, efforts are intensifying to provide early and accurate warning of severe weather systems. In Russia, meteorologists are pursuing this potentially life-saving goal with world-class computing and storage solutions from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC).

Russia's Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) after a thorough evaluation and rigorous procurement procedure has deployed Silicon Graphics solutions to rapidly develop detailed models that enable more precise weather forecasts. The systems operate at 27 trillion operations per second, providing 10,000 times the computational power of Roshydromet's previous Cray supercomputer. This enhanced capability has expanded both the forecast duration and the accuracy of these critical forecasts.

One system is equipped with 6.6 trillion bytes (TB) of globally shared memory, so Russian meteorologists can process much larger models and produce more accurate forecasts.

Installed in December, the new systems will help Roshydromet minimize the losses to life and property caused by severe weather. The Federal Service also expects to:

* Generate forecasts with much better accuracy and more details, as compared to the earlier forecasts.
* Extend the forecast duration from 5-7 days previously to 7-10 days.
* Offer a new variety of specialized weather forecasts to serve the needs of the growing economy of the Russian Federation. This is possible, because the new Silicon Graphics solution will allow Roshydromet to:
o Generate global weather models with resolution of 40 kilometers (km) or better - nearly 4 times more detailed than previous models.
o Reach the resolution of 15 kilometer for some regions and eventually produce forecasts for major cities that are accurate down to a 1.5-3 kilometer, enabling, for instance, specific districts within Moscow to receive their own forecasts.

With Russia covering more than one-eighth of the planet's land area, forecasting weather nationwide presents a uniquely difficult challenge. Creating weather and climate models at a resolution of just 40 km requires massive compute resources and fast access to data. Yet strict power limitations at Roshydromet's computer center meant that only the most energy-efficient solutions could be considered.

"We map the globe in our models, with denser resolution from the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait, Roshydromet forecasts weather in areas that include mountain ranges, steppes, forests and near desert," said Vladimir Antsypovitch, director, Main Computer Center at Roshydromet. "With more detailed weather models, we can spare lives and communities from devastating weather threats. As the result of the selection procedure has shown, Silicon Graphics was the only vendor capable of delivering the performance, flexibility and reliability our applications require, along with the energy efficiency we needed to stay within our power constraints."

"As weather systems grow more severe, developing and disseminating an accurate forecast quickly has become an economic and public safety imperative for governments around the world," said Dr. Deepak Thakkar, director of marketing at Silicon Graphics. "With powerful, shared-memory solutions from Silicon Graphics, Roshydromet can rise to the challenge of providing 48-hour forecasts for the largest country in the world while meeting its very specific power constraints."

"Forecasting severe weather for large, diverse geographies like Russia plays a vital role in a proactive public safety strategy. Intel is proud to power the energy-smart server solutions from SGI® that make this possible for Roshydromet," said Richard Dracott, Intel's General Manager of High Performance Computing. "The Intel Itanium® and Xeon® processors used in the SGI systems provide the scalability, reliability, and energy-efficient performance for these applications that are immense both in their scope and in their impact on people's lives."

To read the original release at SGI.com, click here.

NEC Enters the North American Server Market

2009-01-23T00:00:00-07:00

...The NEC server line uses only Intel CPUs. Notably, they also offer an Itanium-based 5800/1000 server which is something of rarity these days. The 5800/1000 supports dynamic hardware partitioning which allows hot add of processors and memory based on thresholds and policies of the running OS partition.

In addition, to their standard enterprise server line NEC also offers Fault Tolerant Servers like the NEC Express 5800/300 which offer full internal hardware redundancy and provides 99.999% system uptime. They also offer their line 5800/100 series of Blade Servers as well as the SMB oriented 3800/100 line of rack and tower servers...

To read the original article at WindowsITPro.com, click here.

Java SE Ported to Itanium

2009-01-21T00:00:00-07:00

Available for both Windows and Linux environments

According to the Itanium Solutions Alliance, Intel and Sun Microsystems worked together to port Sun's Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) to Itanium-based systems. Now generally available, Java SE 6 for Itanium furnishes a Java development platform for Itanium-based solutions for both Windows and Linux environments...

To read the original article from Dr. Dobb's Portal, click here.

Release of Java� Standard Edition Benefits Itanium� Ecosystem

2009-01-15T00:00:00-07:00

Sun, Intel collaboration expands choice for developers and end users

PORTLAND, Ore. - January 15, 2009 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is pleased to recognize the collaborative effort between Intel and Sun Microsystems to port Sun's JavaTM Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) to Itanium-based systems. Now generally available, Java SE 6 for Itanium furnishes a robust Java development platform for Itanium-based solutions for both Windows and Linux environments.

"The release of Java SE 6 for Itanium enhances the ease and flexibility with which Itanium developers can create enterprise-class server applications, and allows them to take full advantage of the capabilities inherent in Sun's latest development platform," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "By advancing the development of new solutions for end users, this Java update supports the Alliance's commitment to open, industry-standard solutions."

"Sybase customers in finance, communications and government manage some of the world's most high performance data servers using Adaptive Server Enterprise 15 on Itanium," said Brian Vink, vice president, database product marketing, Sybase. "With the upcoming release of Adaptive Server Enterprise 15.0.3, enterprises can now leverage the benefits of the latest Java SE 6 for Itanium for running Java code in their databases."

The Java release offers significant performance gains over the previous version, including improvements in the Java HotSpot virtual machine and Java class libraries. Java developers are encouraged to download the updated development kit and start creating the next generation of applications that harness the performance, reliability and scalability of Itanium-based systems. The latest JDK for Sun Java SE 6, which includes support for Itanium, is ready for download from the Sun Developer Network at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.

Itanium-based solutions are offered by global server system vendors with deep experience in delivering mission-critical server solutions, and supported by 10 operating systems and over 13,000 applications. Itanium-based systems are used worldwide as migration paths to replace legacy mainframes, sturdy foundations for mission-critical data systems, and high-powered workhorses for computationally intensive applications. Itanium-based systems shipped worldwide to date number over 210,000.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance is comprised of some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

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Itanium cruising at full speed, claims backers

2009-01-09T00:00:00-07:00

The Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) released a report on its efforts to provide open standards for Itanium, Intel's first 64-bit architecture. 2008 was a very good year for the Linux-compatible Itanium, with $1 billion in Itanium-related revenues over the last five quarters, says the group.

Aiming to counter skeptics who have noted that other 64-bit x86 architectures, such as AMD64, x86-64, and EMT, have far outdeployed Itanium (which The Register used to call "the Itanic"), ISA argues that the platform is pushing forward at full steam, with no icebergs in sight. Total global shipments having exceeded 210,000 units, says the group, which comprises over 200 organizations...

To read the full article at linuxdevices.com, click here.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Drives Momentum in Mission-Critical Computing

2009-01-09T00:00:00-07:00

Global gains and major milestones mark successful 2008

Portland, Ore. - January 9 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance marked a year of accomplishment as Itanium-based systems saw increased migration from legacy mainframes and earned continued success in the mission-critical and computationally intensive arenas. The Alliance and the Itanium platform continue to gain momentum as enterprise IT organizations upgrade infrastructure to take advantage of increased performance and reduced cost of ownership and markets take greater advantage of high-powered Itanium-based server technology.

Global shipments of Itanium-based systems have now exceeded 210,000 units, and sales continue to be strong with revenues passing $1 billion USD for the last five quarters. For instance, Itanium has made significant advances in EMEA, seeing an overall market segment share increase of eight percent at the end of Q3 2008 [source: Gartner Server Update Q308].

"The Alliance has more than 200 organizations united to promote open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel® Itanium architecture," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director. "Itanium-based solutions continue to grow in application support, system volume and market share, thanks to considerable advantages for mission-critical databases, data center modernization and computationally intensive applications."

Built to be an industry-standard open platform, Itanium technology enjoys support from leading independent software vendors (ISVs) - and operating system vendors Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat - who collaborate on new solutions for end users. The availability of multiple technologies from the open source community leverages the work of industry experts to enhance the solution. The Alliance promotes a robust ecosystem for the Itanium architecture that includes more than 13,000 applications for mission-critical computing across multiple industries including financial services, manufacturing and the biosciences.

The following 2008 milestones reflect the progress of the Alliance's efforts and those of sponsor companies:

--In April, Fujitsu Limited launched its new line of PRIMEQUEST servers, built on dual-core Itanium 9100 series processors. These servers, built for mission-critical applications, offer new features like dynamic partitioning, helping them achieve impressive benchmark results. Fujitsu strengthened its global partnership with fellow Alliance member Red Hat in November, when they began a joint development of Linux support services designed to offer quicker problem resolution and extended support periods for mission-critical environments.

--In early 2008, Alliance sponsor Hitachi made its Virtage embedded firmware virtualization feature available for the first time on blade servers based on the Intel Itanium 9100 series processors. Virtage brings embedded firmware virtualization-and with it, lower costs and increased functionality-to the enterprise data center. Virtage technology allows users to scale and virtualize models of Hitachi's BladeSymphony 1000 servers and makes embedded firmware virtualization available to all three tiers of the data center-edge, application and database.

--HP introduced the high-availability, fault-tolerant HP Integrity NonStop NB50000c BladeSystem featuring Itanium processors. This blade-based system for mission-critical deployments delivers world-class availability and scalability for Itanium. HP further expanded its portfolio with the HP Integrity BL870c server blade, designed to handle memory-intensive data center workloads while helping businesses lower cost, save energy and space, and decrease deployment time. Reinforcing its leadership, HP also migrated more than 250 companies worldwide from mainframe systems to HP Integrity systems over the past two years, saving these customers up to 70 percent in operational costs.

--Released in October, Sun Java SE 6 Update 7 for Itanium culminates a collaborative effort between Intel and Sun and provides a robust development platform for Itanium-based solutions. Supporting both Windows and Linux, the update offers improvements in Hotspot Virtual Machine and class libraries to deliver significant performance gains over the last Java release for Itanium.

--Super Micro Computer, Inc. entered the Alliance at the sponsor level, joining current sponsors in committing time and resources to the organization, contributing their unique perspective and considerable expertise to the Alliance's efforts.

--The Alliance recognized 2008 Innovation Awards winners S7 Software Solutions, Protégésoft, and the University of Houston bioinformatics research team at a special event in their honor in August in San Francisco at the Museum of Modern Art.

--Microsoft is working with Alliance members to further advance the performance of the .NET framework on the Itanium architecture. This will benefit ISVs who are using or considering .NET as a development environment for solutions for Itanium-based platforms. In addition, HP and Intel joined Microsoft and others at WinHEC 2008 to showcase the scalability benefits of supporting more than 64 processors in a preview of Windows Server 2008 R2. In a demonstration running 256 Itanium logical processors on an HP Superdome system, Microsoft and HP spotlighted the joint potential of Windows and Itanium for large SQL Server databases. As Bill Laing, corporate vice president, Windows Server and Solutions Division of Microsoft, observed in his keynote, "Itanium is supported in Windows Server 2008 R2 and we really focused our support on Itanium for these large scale database workloads."

--The Alliance and Sophos announced the porting of Sophos Anti-Virus to Itanium. The offering represents some of the most powerful and extensive anti-virus solutions for Itanium-based systems, delivering proven algorithms to identify, quickly disable, and quarantine anti-virus threats.

This past year also marked highly successful implementations and innovations based on Itanium architecture. Some examples are:

Fujitsu Dials in Upgrade for Brazil's Largest Mobile Telecommunication Company

Faced with increasing demands on its Next Generation Intelligent Network (NGIN), Vivo of Brazil chose Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST servers running on Intel Itanium processors. NGIN is responsible for managing and authorizing prepaid calls based on available credits, credit loading and interfacing with stores' systems, resellers, call centers and client attendance.

NEC Awarded Contract for National Pension System by Taiwan's Bureau of Labor Insurance

To integrate its new national pension system, the Taiwanese Bureau of Labor Insurance turned to database solutions from NEC Corporation. The project is a national-level large-scale mission-critical system that will handle pension-related data for approximately five million employees. The new system features more than 100 NEC servers, including the Itanium-based NEC Express 5800 Series, and will process critical operations related to the national pension system.

SGI Optimizes EventVUE for Itanium-based Altix Servers

SGI announced that its Complex Event Processing (CEP) solution has been optimized for Itanium processors, which enable applications to take maximum advantage of the high-throughput, shared-memory SGI Altix architecture. The CEP platform combines SGI compute and visualization capabilities to help government, defense and Homeland Security leaders make faster, more informed decisions in complex situations where immediate action may be required. EventVUE monitors key thresholds in real time to trigger data flow and processing according to pre-determined policies, so decision makers are alerted to potential threats immediately.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at http://www.itaniumsolutions.org.

© 2009. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
###

SGI Altix Systems with Up to 8TB of Global Shared Memory Raise the Bar Again for HPC and Business Computing

2008-12-08T00:00:00-07:00

Silicon Graphics Technology Opens New Opportunities for Industrial and Research Customers

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (December 8, 2008) - Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC) global shared memory architecture enables industrial, government and university researchers to gain insight into larger data sets than ever thought possible. With 8TB of global shared memory, SGI® Altix® systems are able to hold entire data sets in memory and eliminate many types of application and system I/O - accelerating scientific research and I/O bound business computing problems.

With up to 8TB of global shared memory with as few as 12 processor cores, SGI Altix 4700 systems are enabling applications for a number of important projects:

* NASA's SGI Altix 4700 system, installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. in August 2007, was the first supercomputer to operate 2,048 processor cores and 4TB of memory under a single copy of the Linux® operating system - by processor count, the largest single system image (SSI) based upon the Linux operating system in the world.
* At the Center for Information Services and High-Performance Computing at Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden), an SGI Altix 4700 system powered by 2,048 Intel® Itanium® processor cores and 6.5TB of main memory is enabling researchers throughout Germany to break through information processing barriers in a broad range of disciplines. For example, a team of German researchers is running complex simulations to determine how medical device makers might fuse biological materials with plastics or ceramics to create the ideal hip replacement. TU Dresden's system has enabled over a 100 fold speedup in running complex simulations, with a large eddy simulation that used to take more than three months, completing overnight on the SGI Altix 4700 system.
* The Institute for Molecular Science in Japan uses a 512-core SGI Altix 4700 system with 6TB shared memory and a 128-core SGI Altix 4700 with 2TB shared memory. Because of SGI's scalable architecture, both systems can be attached and create an 8TB global shared memory environment.
* SGI Altix systems with 4TB to 8TB of memory are also being used to develop advanced reservoir simulation applications and models which can increase the fraction of discovered oil that can be recovered - extending their life by many years and increasing their value by billions of dollars.

"With 8TB of global shared memory on the SGI Altix 4700, scientists and engineers around the world are able to boost productivity by integrating theory, simulation and experimentation more closely than every before," said Michael Brown, director of server and visualization marketing at Silicon Graphics. "With 8TB of global shared memory, scientists, engineers and businesses can solve problems that are 4x larger than on the largest systems from IBM and HP, and 8x larger than the largest systems available from Sun. This allows developers to link multi-disciplinary applications that operate on different scales to create more complete pictures of their work - gaining invaluable insights that lead to breakthrough results."

To read the original release from SGI.com, click here.

Fujitsu and Red Hat Strengthen Alliance on Linux Support Services for Mission-Critical Environments

2008-11-18T00:00:00-07:00

Fujitsu Limited and Red Hat, Inc. today announced that they have strengthened their global alliance for providing Linux support services for mission-critical environments.

Building on the maintenance and support expertise Fujitsu has cultivated through its mainframe systems, the two companies have jointly developed new Linux support services that are designed to provide quicker response times and extended support periods for mission-critical systems.

The new support services will be available beginning today for the Japan market through Fujitsu, and gradually expanded to other geographic markets in the future.

Background
The number of customers using Linux, the open-source and vendor-independent operating system, for mission-critical and other applications continues to increase. Since forming a global alliance in May 2003, Fujitsu and Red Hat have been working together in software development, marketing, sales, system configuration, and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux solutions in mission-critical environments running platforms that combine Red Hat Enterprise Linux with mission-critical Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST servers and PRIMERGY PC servers.

Under their strengthened partnership, the companies will offer new Red Hat Enterprise Linux support services which will extend the bug fix support periods for the update releases 5.2 and 5.3 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux software longer than the current period. This will provide customers with an opportunity for greater ease and reliable use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their enterprise systems.

About the New Linux Support Services
The following will be offered as part of the menu of services from Fujitsu's SupportDesk, which provides operations and maintenance support services:

1. SupportDesk Linux - Extended Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is usually updated periodically to improve its functionality. Because regular Red Hat Enterprise Linux support services only provide troubleshooting support for the most recent release, customers are obliged to update their operating system to the latest release every six months.

Under the new SupportDesk Linux - Extended Support for enterprise systems, Fujitsu will extend this support period to one and a half year to two years for the most recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, as well as for future Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions, including 5.4 and 5.6, and will offer an additional six-month overlap period, so that customers can carry out planned updating and avoid unpredictability in the operation of their systems.

2. SupportDesk Linux - Long-Term Support
This is a level of Red Hat Enterprise Linux support services specifically intended for companies that have the greatest need for system reliability, such as financial services and telecom companies.

This service will extend the troubleshooting support period for the upcoming availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 to about five years, with a two-year overlap in each case. Thus, customers will have ample time to acclimate their systems to each release, permitting one update to run over a long period, in accordance with the customer's systems maintenance schedule.

Furthermore, Red Hat has assembled a dedicated high-reliability support organization, with customized support locations and faster troubleshooting and response times. This organization will provide customers with an even greater level of support.

Shift-JIS Support Services
Another customer benefit to come from the alliance between Fujitsu and Red Hat is official support for Shift-JIS, a method for encoding Japanese text, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. This will enable customers to quickly and inexpensively migrate their COBOL assets to the Linux environment and ensure ongoing support for Shift-JIS in the Linux environment for a fixed period of time during the planned transition to the Unicode standard.

Fujitsu and Red Hat look forward to continuing and strengthening their close cooperation to provide customers with products and services that anticipate their needs and to promote the use of Linux in enterprise systems.

To read the original release from Fujitsu.com, click here.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Drives Momentum in Mission Critical Computing

2008-11-12T00:00:00-07:00

Virtualization, application support and TCO speeds migration to Itanium-based systems
as Alliance marks year of growth

China Shanghai, November 12, 2008 – Today, the Itanium® Solutions Alliance announced strong momentum in several areas in 2008, which mirrored Itanium-based solutions growth in Asia Pacific. Itanium-based systems saw significant growth in system migration from mainframes attributed to virtualization support, broad availability of applications and total cost of ownership. This year, the Alliance membership increased to more than 200 organizations who are now part of the effort to promote open, industry standard solutions based on Intel® Itanium architecture. As the Alliance enters its fourth year of operation, Itanium-based solutions continue to grow in application support, system volume and market share, driven by the technology’s considerable advantages for mission-critical databases, data center modernization and computationally intensive applications.

The Alliance promotes a robust ecosystem for the Intel Itanium architecture that includes more than 13,000 applications for mission critical computing across multiple industries, such as telecom, manufacturing and financial services. Built to be an industry standard open platform, Itanium enjoys support from leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) around the world who collaborate on new solutions for end users. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization on Intel Itanium with VT-i extensions is a good example of a powerful combined solution. The availability of multiple technologies from the open source community, including Linux, Xen, libvirt, and others, leverages the work of the best and brightest in the industry to enhance this solution. Additionally, Red Hat leverages standards, such as libvirt and common information model (CIM), to provide management based on open standards, allowing organizations to select the tools that best fit their environment.

The number of Itanium-based systems shipped worldwide has now exceeded 210,000, and revenues for Itanium-based systems have topped $1 billion USD for five consecutive quarters. Among global regions, Asia-Pacific leads with year-over-year sales revenue growth of 41 percent, according to IDC’s WW Server Tracker, Q2 2008.

“With economic slowdown reaching across the world, more and more enterprises wish to maximize server utilization while retaining reliability. The Asia – Pacific market saw strong growth not only because the regional IT market is booming, but also because more than ever, enterprises require data centers that address their business growth,” said Eddie Toh, chairman of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, Asia Pacific. “The open architecture of Itanium provides customers with mainframe reliability at a mainstream price.”

Overall Alliance progress is made clear by these 2008 milestones:
-    Sun Java SE 6 Update 7 for Itanium is officially released and generally available supports both Windows and Linux. The culmination of a deep collaborative effort between Intel and Sun provides a robust development platform for Itanium-based solutions. Improvements in Hotspot Virtual Machine and class libraries deliver significant performance gains over the last Java release for Itanium.
-    Super Micro Computer, Inc., a world-renowned server hardware manufacturer, joins founding sponsors Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Hitachi, Intel, NEC and SGI in committing time and resources to the growing organization, contributing a unique perspective and considerable expertise to the Alliance’s efforts.
-    At the 2008 Alliance Innovation Awards, two of the three overall category winners were Itanium platform users from Asia. S7 Software Solutions, a software services company based in Bangalore, India, won the Entrepreneurial category for their unique work porting more than 2 million lines of software code onto the Intel Itanium architecture for a Fortune 100 company's financial transaction system. Enterprise Business Application category winner Protégésoft, of Singapore, developed Financial Portfolio Builder, a comprehensive financial investment system that supports the entire spectrum of portfolio management. FPB operates from a single platform of four-way HP Integrity servers based on Intel Itanium processors.

Also in 2008, Itanium-based systems recorded several customer success stories in the Asia Pacific region. Examples include the following:

Nisol Corrugated Cartons Ltd. On Integrity
Nisol Corrugated Carton Limited is a major player in Colombo’s booming packaging industry. In order for the company to stay at the forefront of the market, it decided to consolidate its previously disparate IT infrastructure. Working closely with HP, the company deployed an Itanium-based HP Integrity Server and Prestige Atlantic ERP solution to achieve the performance, stability and scalability it was looking for.

NEC Awarded Contract for National Pension System by Taiwan's Bureau of Labor Insurance
To integrate its new national pension system, the Taiwanese Bureau of Labor Insurance turned to mission-critical database solutions from NEC Corporation. The project is a national-level large-scale mission critical system that will handle pension-related data for approximately 5 million employees. The new system features more than 100 NEC servers, including the Itanium-based NEC Express 5800 Series, and will process critical operations related to the national pension system, including member management, contribution calculations, billing services, accounting and benefit services.

Philippines National Bank
Philippines National Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in the Philippines, migrated from an IBM mainframe environment to Itanium-based HP Integrity systems to run core banking solutions as part of its three-year IT transformation project. The project is intended to make the organization more competitive by significantly lowering operating costs and increasing service offerings for overseas and local customers.

Malaysia Genome Institute Advances Bioinformatics Research Using SGI Technology
To create an optimal workflow that encompasses the diverse computing requirements of bioinformatics research, the Malaysia Genomics Institute selected SGI to design a unique SGI hybrid computing solution. Because bioinformatics research uses a variety of software at various stages in the workflow, the combined use of shared-memory systems and clusters provides an optimal environment for the efficient use of each application. SGI delivered an Itanium-based hybrid computing solution that consists of the new SGI BioCluster as well as an SGI Altix shared memory server and an SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS™ SAN shared file system, which makes the entire workflow transparent to the user regardless of software employed or stage of the process at which scientists are performing.

SGI Altix 4700 to Help Ensure Successful Launch of FENGYUN-3 Satellite; System Ranks as Fourth Most Powerful Computer in China
To ensure the successful launch of China's new polar-orbiting meteorological satellite, the China National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC) turned to high-performance computing and storage solutions from SGI. NSMC recently deployed China's largest shared-memory computer – and the fourth most powerful computer in the country – to support the launch program for the FENGYUN-3. The SGI Altix system is powered by 1,280 Intel Itanium processor cores and 4TB of shared memory. NSMC integrated the supercomputer with a 26TB SGI InfiniteStorage solution and the SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS file system.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2008. Itanium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Intel and Itanium 2 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

WinHEC: Windows Server 2008 R2 Pushes Processor Limits

2008-11-07T00:00:00-07:00

Windows Server 2008 R2 got the lion's share of attention on Thursday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, starting with a keynote by Microsoft exec Bill Laing.

Laing is Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Windows Server Division. While much of the news about Windows Server 2008 R2 features had been disclosed last week at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, the keynote hit the high points for an audience consisting largely of Microsoft's hardware engineering partners.

The R2 version of Windows Server 2008 isn't generally available yet, but it's being reviewed by some of Microsoft's partners. It's expected to be publicly available in late 2009 or early 2010.

Nonetheless, WinHEC attendees could still see Windows Server 2008 R2 in action during Laing's keynote. Onstage with Laing were two big-box servers, including the Hewlett-Packard Integrity Superdome Server using Intel Itanium x64 processors plus two terabytes of memory and the IBM x3950 M2 Server running Intel Xeon x86 processors.

To read the full article at RPCmag.com, click here.

Partners Rally for More Than 64 Processors at WinHEC 2008

2008-11-06T00:00:00-07:00

Microsoft has been working with partners to support more than 64 processors for Windows applications and device drivers. IBM, Intel and HP today joined Bill Laing, corporate vice president of Windows Server and Solutions, during his keynote address to showcase the scalability benefits of supporting more than 64 processors, a new feature of Windows Server 2008 R2. This capability allows customers to take advantage of the latest hardware advancements for improved performance.

"Customers need to be able to support ever-larger and more mission-critical workloads while keeping their costs under control," said Martin Fink, senior vice president of Business Critical Systems at HP. "HP and Microsoft are collaborating closely to support 256 logical processors with HP Integrity servers, to bring customers the most massively scalable, mission-critical platform for Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server."

"IBM and Microsoft have worked closely to extend Windows support beyond 64 threads for x86 platforms," said James Northington, vice president of IBM System x. "IBM's System x servers with eX4, the fourth generation of IBM's Enterprise X Architecture-based chipset for Intel processor-based servers, delivers up to 192 threads of processing capability within a single systems image. This extended Windows capability enables businesses to optimally consolidate more and more workload or deploy larger and larger databases on IBM eX4-based systems."

"The scale-up segment of the server market is increasingly adopting solutions built around Intel's Xeon and Itanium processors," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "By pairing the performance and scalability of these processors with Windows Server 2008 R2's support for more than 64 processors, Intel and Microsoft are helping customers deploy more cost-effective server solutions for their most mission-critical business intelligence, enterprise resource planning and line-of-business applications."

To read the entire article at Microsoft.com, click here.

Businesses Achieve Cost Savings of up to 70 Percent by Migrating to HP Integrity Servers

2008-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

HP today announced that 40 European customers have successfully migrated in the past year from legacy mainframe systems to HP Integrity servers, achieving data center cost savings of up to 70 percent.(1)

Increasingly, companies are migrating from mainframes to HP Integrity servers for mission-critical IT operations in an effort to reduce high hardware operating and software licensing costs. HP expects to help migrate an additional 125 European companies in the next 12 months.

HP's continued strong market share position is further evidence of customer confidence in HP Integrity servers as an alternative to mainframes. According to IDC, HP tied for the top position in revenue for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Enterprise server market, securing 32.7 percent market share as measured in the second quarter of 2008.(2) HP Integrity servers represented the majority of HP's Business Critical Systems revenue in EMEA, with 78 percent share in the third quarter of fiscal year 2008.(3)

"Customers are increasingly fed up with the rising costs and inflexibility of mainframe systems due to the resulting negative impact on their businesses," said Ruud Vrolijk, vice president and general manager, Business Critical Systems - EMEA, HP. "HP helps customers meet future needs by shedding unnecessary costs and modernizing their legacy applications. HP also promotes better investment protection through its open, modular HP Integrity server solutions that are much more economical and flexible in adapting to changes in a business."

Improved flexibility with reduced costs

Companies of different sizes and from different industries gain quantifiable results by migrating to HP Integrity systems. HP helped Public Security Police (PSP), Portugal, migrate from its existing IBM mainframe to HP Integrity to run its Strategic System Information.

"PSP's challenge was to bring down the costs of the technology platform," said Maria Eduarda Lopes, IT director, PSP. "The open platform significantly lowers total cost of ownership, while ensuring high flexibility and reduced maintenance time."

Additional customers in the EMEA region who migrated from mainframe systems to HP Integrity to reduce data center costs and improve flexibility include: Amadeus, Banco Espirito, Continental AG, Mashreqbank and Portuguese Air Force.

Rapid adoption of Intel® Itanium® processor-based platforms

Particularly in EMEA's financial and telecom sectors, Intel is seeing companies move away from legacy mainframe environments and choosing more flexible and reliable Intel Itanium processor-based solutions like HP Integrity systems. The results are reduced IT costs and a data center environment that is highly optimized for mission-critical operations designed to prepare organizations to meet future needs.

"The Intel Itanium processor, along with our robust processor roadmap, is well positioned as a mainframe replacement solution for mission-critical applications such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and business intelligence," said Joachim Aertebjerg, server business manager - EMEA, Intel. "The fast adoption of HP Integrity servers and migration from legacy mainframe environments are good validation of Itanium's ability to meet the rising requirements of performance-demanding industries. Together with members of the IT industry like HP, Intel will continue to develop the Itanium platform with new innovations and process technology well into the future."

HP has established "HP Mainframe Migrations Centres of Excellence" in Europe to address the increasing growth of the mainframe migration business and to ensure execution excellence in customers' migration efforts. The flagship centre is located in Madrid, Spain, with a second centre in Bucharest, Romania. Using specialized knowledge and technical expertise, the centres render assistance to the local EMEA country teams throughout the stages of customer engagement, delivery process and advancement phase, thereby facilitating best practices for mainframe migrations.

HP Integrity innovations continue to grow

In addition to HP's success with transitioning customers to Integrity servers, the product line itself has recently expanded to include these innovations:

* New operating environments for HP-UX 11i v3 with built-in virtualization software to simplify and speed up customers' UNIX deployments and help reduce maintenance costs.
* QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/Itanium on HP Integrity servers helps users move enterprise applications from SPARC-based hardware to HP Integrity servers running HP-UX or Linux.
* HP Integrity BL870c - the first four-socket HP Integrity server blade that combines support for mission-critical applications with the modular infrastructure and energy efficiency of HP BladeSystem. The server can save up to 25 percent in power usage.
* HP Insight Dynamics - VSE - provides the first integrated server management solution that allows customers to visualize, plan and change their physical and virtual resources on demand.
* HP Integrity NonStop BladeSystem - the first 24/7 fault-tolerant system that uses a blade server for maximum uptime and efficiency.

About HP

HP, the world's largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

To read the original release from HP.com, click here.

SGI and Coral8 Team Up to Provide Continuous, Actionable Insight for Government, Defense and Intelligence

2008-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

Alliance Boosts SGI Real-Time Visual Complex Event Processing Solution

SUNNYVALE and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (Oct. 21, 2008) - Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGIC) and Coral8, Inc. today announced a strategic alliance to integrate and package Coral8's complex event processing (CEP) software with SGI® Altix® servers. The new agreement makes the Coral8 Engine a core part of a new real-time, visual CEP capability from Silicon Graphics.

"Coral8 and SGI are bringing powerful new data analysis software and solutions that offer rapid implementation, extremely high throughput rates, and flexible alerting mechanisms to a marketplace hungry for such solutions," said Terry Cunningham, CEO at Coral8. "The Coral8 Engine and SGI Altix both meet the reliability and availability requirements of defense and intelligence environments, while meeting the need for scalable processing and to analyze the ever growing volumes of real-time data."

The SGI platform combines acclaimed SGI® compute and visualization capabilities with the Coral8 Engine to:

* Enable intuitive, visual analysis of complex data culled from multiple sources
* Lead to unprecedented visibility and situational awareness of people, infrastructures, communications, facilities and vehicle movement
* Give decision-makers a 360-degree view of complex events
* Monitor key thresholds to alert leaders to potential threats in time to take action

"Continuous surveillance, analysis and alerting are essential to real-time mission-critical operations, as rapidly growing data volumes make it increasingly more difficult to turn information into actionable insight," said Robert Robbins, director of Defense and Strategic Systems at SGI. "This new platform, together with our relationship with Coral8, will help Government, Defense and Homeland Security leaders make faster, more informed decisions -- decisions that might spell the difference between success or failure, and even life or death."

"SGI systems' ability to handle massive amounts of shared addressable memory make them particularly well suited to high-performance analysis of large data sets," said Richard Dracott, general manager, High Performance Computing, Intel. "The SGI CEP solution takes advantage of this capability for real-time analysis of complex data streams to identify significant events where immediate action may be required."

TJSB Upgrading its IT Infrastructure

2008-10-20T00:00:00-07:00

Thane Janata Sahakari Bank (TJSB), a co-operative bank with a network of 42 branches and two extension counters spread in Thane, Mumbai Navi-Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik, It is planning to upgrade its existing server infrastructure to Itanium-based servers.

Subodh Nagvekar, CIO of TJSB said, "The decentralised branch banking approach didn't quite work in the current business scene so a contemporary technology-based core banking solution was the need of the hour. We are now looking to implement virtualization within the organization and for this we have shifted the solution to Itanium-based servers." Virtualization will enable the bank to reduce the total number of physical servers, saving costs and space, and giving better performance...

To read the full article at CXOtoday.com, click here.

SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse Solution Goes Visual

2008-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

New Alliances Enhance Ability to Rapidly Extract Insights from Large-Scale Oracle Data Warehouse

At Oracle Open World today, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGIC) showcased new third-party applications that extend the ecosystem of the SGI® Adaptive Data Warehouse Solution.

The new tools help make the SGI solution, optimized for Oracle® data warehouses, even more effective in managing soaring data volumes, increasingly complex analyses, data mining and visualization, multiple workflows, and growing populations of users. Such conditions are common in high-performance business enterprises that rely on data warehouses to conduct fraud analysis, customer data mining, predictive analysis, and other data-intensive applications.

In its booth at Oracle Open World, SGI is spotlighting new front-end tools for the SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse Solution:

* Visual data mining. Mineset 3.2 from Vero Insight is an integrated suite of visual data mining tools that reveals the hidden value buried in data, trends, patterns and relationships. Mineset distills complex information into easily understood graphics, and supports real-time "what if" analysis with parameters that can be adjusted on the fly. (www.vero-insight.com)
* Open source Business Intelligence (BI). Pentaho Corporation's Pentaho Open BI Suite provides comprehensive reporting OLAP analysis, dashboards, data integration and data mining. At Oracle Open World, Pentaho will demonstrate real-time data integration for operational dashboards and delivery of BI information via the Apple iPhone. (www.pentaho.com)
* Emails, Documents, Multimedia and Transactions (EDMT) data warehouse. BMMsoft EDMT Server is a Multipurpose Data Warehouse for real-time capture of EDMT data in a single, secure relational database that creates single, unified view of data for fast real-time analysis. Cross-correlation analysis enables managers to quickly make better, more informed decisions. (www.bmmsoft.com)

Quote:
"No solution is complete without strong alliances and we are delighted to welcome these new tools to the growing SGI Adaptive Warehouse Solution ecosystem," said Shahin Khan, vice president of marketing and corporate development, SGI. "Actionable insight is the name of the game and the deluge of data from thousands of sources can cause perception overload. Handling it, processing it, and visualizing it require the kind of storage, supercomputing, visualization, and services that only Silicon Graphics can bring to customers".

More about the SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse Solution:

* Launched as part of the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative
* Combines Oracle Database software with SGI® Altix® servers and SGI® InfiniteStorage systems
* Scales to meet the needs of customers whose requirements extend beyond the capabilities of traditional enterprise computers
* Supports data warehouses ranging from 4 Terabytes (TB) to more than 300TB
* Allows Oracle data warehouse customers to scale their I/O bandwidth without having to add unnecessary components
* Leverages the power and scalability of the Intel® Itanium® processor or Intel® Xeon® processor 5000 sequence.
* Learn more at www.sgi.com/industries/data_warehouse/

At Oracle Open World (Sept. 22-25)

* SGI Booth 3418 West Hall, Moscone Conference Center, San Francisco

© 2008 SGI. All rights reserved. SGI, the SGI cube, Altix and the SGI logo are registered trademarks, of SGI in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Intel, Xeon and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

To read the original article at SGI.com, click here.

Aonix User Interface Management System Delivers GUI Development for 64-bit Platforms

2008-09-15T00:00:00-07:00

Significant new release ports TeleUSE to multiple high-performance systems

San Diego, CA, September 15, 2008-Aonix®, an independent international company delivering complete solutions for safety- and mission-critical applications, released TeleUSE® version 4.0, the latest version of its object-oriented User Interface Management System environment, for 64-bit architectures. New platform support in TeleUSE 4.0 enables seamless cross-platform Motif graphical user interface (GUI) application development on the latest 64-bit systems running Linux, Solaris, and HPUX. A 32-bit edition of TeleUSE 4.0 continues to support development of applications on 32-bit platforms.

TeleUSE, one of the premier Motif development environments available, supports WYSIWYG graphical editing, widget design editing, as well as font, color, and pixmap picture editing. It provides a full production-quality environment that supports interactive development, design, debug and maintenance of applications containing a Motif GUI. Using TeleUSE, developers can build large-scale enterprise GUI applications using a template facility for the construction of user interface elements and an easy-to-program dialog scripting language to implement user interface logic.

Recognizing the need for more than source code output generation for a GUI, TeleUSE offers comprehensive facilities for building a full and final application executable using a platform-independent approach. TeleUSE also provides full support for integration of third-party Motif widgets, such as the industry-leading XRT® Professional Developer's Suite (XRT PDS), which is used by thousands of professional developers around the world to build informative, attractive and functional user-interfaces.

"With the use of 64-bit operating systems on high-performance, relatively inexpensive hardware platforms becoming commonplace, a number of Aonix customers have been asking for 64-bit support," noted Gary Cato, Director of Marketing. "With this latest version of TeleUSE, we are addressing their need and giving them the capability to combine the power of these newer, faster machines and latest operating system versions with the well-proven scalability and robustness of TeleUSE."

With this release, TeleUSE continues its leadership role as a premier tool for development and maintenance of large-scale applications that use Motif for their user interface. Recognizing the diverse needs of customers in the mission- and safety-critical space, Aonix stands committed to implementing the latest technology into its enterprise-level software development tools on open-source platforms and enabling access to the latest technology.

Cato added, "With the release of TeleUSE 4.0, Aonix delivers the 64-bit capability our customers require while maintaining upward compatibility that preserves the investment customers have in the mission-critical applications developed using earlier versions of TeleUSE."

Brand new with this release of TeleUSE is support for the HPUX operating system for the Itanium processor. This port was partially funded by a customer in the European Community and has since been in high demand from several other customers in the aerospace and defense industries, making it among the highest priority development efforts for Aonix.

Included with 64-bit TeleUSE 4.0 are 64-bit TeleUSE runtime libraries and the associated C/C++ header files used in the construction of 64-bit application executable files. Enhancements within the TeleUSE 4.0 C/C++ header files enable seamless compilation of generated C/C++ code for either 64- or 32-bit applications using the latest C++ compilers such as Sun Studio 12 on either SPARC or Intel/AMD 64 Solaris 10 and GCC 4.1.2 on Linux. Application developers using TeleUSE enjoy increased virtual memory address space and the performance benefits that 64-bit computing offers.

In addition to support for 64-bit processors, TeleUSE 4.0 delivers an update to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 for Intel and AMD 64-bit machines and is designed specifically to support Solaris 10.

Shipping and Availability
Early Access Releases (EAR) of TeleUSE 4.0 for 64-bit Solaris, Linux and HPUX systems are available now. First Customer Ship (FCS) of these platforms will be available in November. TeleUSE is also available for IBM/AIX on 32-bit systems, and Windows. Additional information about TeleUSE and the XRT Widgets is available at www.aonix.com/teleuse.html.

About Aonix®
Aonix offers mission- and safety-critical solutions primarily to the military and aerospace, telecommunications and transportation industries. Aonix delivers the leading highly reliable, real-time embedded virtual machine solution for running Java^TM programs deployed today and has the largest number of certified Ada applications at the highest level of criticality. Headquartered in San Diego, CA and Paris, France, Aonix operates sales offices throughout North America and Europe in addition to offering a network of international distributors.

To read the original story at Aonix.com, click here.

Gartner Says Indian IT Market To Reach US $110 Billion In 2012

2008-09-11T00:00:00-07:00

Highlights Key Predictions for Indian IT Marketing in 2008 and Beyond

Mumbai, India, September 11, 2008 - IT end user spending in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8 per cent from 2007 through 2012 to generate US $110 billion in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2008, IT end user spending is on pace to reach US $64.7 billion, a 17.2 per cent increase from 2007.

This prediction, supplemented by a robust gross domestic product (GDP) averaging 8.08 per cent growth from 2007 through 2012, means the Indian market continues to represent a significant growth opportunity for IT vendors. (See Table 1)

India is poised for double-digit growth across many vertical markets, with financial services and communications organizations spending the most on IT, closely followed by services, manufacturing and government...

To read the full article at Gartner.com, click here.

Server market grows in Asia Pacific region despite economy in U.S.

2008-09-08T00:00:00-07:00

The server market in Asia grew by a healthy margin in Q2 2008, according to a new report that credits the AP with driving worldwide industry growth. Asian sales grew by 15.6% over the quarter compared to the same quarter in 2007. Gartner reports that server revenues totaled $2.01 billion for the quarter and 390,758 units were shipped.

Gartner's report acknowledges potential trouble in the US, but emerging markets like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are helping to take up the slack and are pushing growth in the IT industry. Gartner reports that the x86 server segment was the main contributor to the growth of the server market in Asia for Q2 2008. This was on the back of a growing demand for virtualization technology, which in turn drives demand for configuration rich processors able to support this feature...

To read the full article at arstechnica.com, click here.

Gartner Says Asia Pacific Server Market Continued Its Momentum as Shipments Increased 15.6 Percent in Second Quarter 2008

2008-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

In the second quarter of 2008, Asia Pacific server shipments posted another healthy growth of 15.6 percent year-on-year. Revenue increased 5.4 percent year-on-year, according to Gartner, Inc. Server revenues totaled US$2.01 billion for the quarter, as server shipments reached 390,758 units.

Despite the US downturn, healthy economic conditions in many of the emerging markets in the region like India, Indonesia and Vietnam is fuelling IT spending across various industries.

The x86 server segment turned out to be the key growth contributor (see Table 1), especially in bigger markets like Greater China and Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). Continued improvement in x86 technology coupled with growing adoption of virtualization technology is driving demand for configuration rich 2-way and 4-way processors...

To read the full article at Gartner.com, click here.

Server Buyers Shop Like It's 1999 in the Second Quarter

2008-08-25T00:00:00-07:00

If the economies of the Western countries are heading into recession, the purchase orders for servers at companies sure don't seem to be a reflection of this yet. And the Asia/Pacific, Eastern European, and South American markets still seem to be booming, despite more than a year of jittery economies where their indigenous companies have their own customers. And so, the second quarter looked pretty good in terms of server sales, according to research from box counter Gartner, with server sales up 5.7 percent to $13.8 billion and shipments up 12.2 percent to 2.34 million units.

Of course, such good numbers could be, in hindsight a few quarters from now, a buying binge before the inevitable fall that will undoubtedly occur with server spending if there is a sustained recession in the United States and Europe that might have already started. (Economists are arguing about such things now.) I happen to be of the opinion that companies are looking to toss out racks and racks of 32-bit X86 iron and replace it with newer X64 iron with more oomph, and in some cases with iron that can be virtualized to offer better price/performance for supporting various workloads. And this will be a driver of server sales whether there is a recession or not. In fact, a recession might speed up the virtualization effect, compelling companies to get a lot more efficient with their server budget dollars and therefore embrace virtualization even more quickly and pervasively than they might otherwise...

To read the full article at ITJungle.com, click here.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Welcomes Supermicro As Sponsor

2008-08-20T00:00:00-07:00

Supermicro joins industry leaders in developing Itanium marketplace

SAN RAMON, Calif. - August 20, 2008 - The Itanium Solutions Alliance welcomes Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) as a sponsor of the non-profit association. The server hardware manufacturer joins founding sponsors Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Hitachi, Intel, NEC and SGI in committing time and resources to the growing organization, adding a unique perspective and considerable expertise to the Alliance's efforts. Supermicro's sponsorship will be announced tonight as part of the first annual Innovation Celebration event honoring the Alliance's 2008 Innovation Award winners in San Francisco.

"It's our great pleasure to welcome Supermicro into the Itanium Solutions Alliance, and we look forward to their leadership and strong contributions toward our goal of accelerating the adoption and development of Itanium-based solutions," said Joan Jacobs, executive director of the Alliance. "As a veteran server manufacturer with strong ties to the system integrator channel, Supermicro's participation will benefit the Alliance and its members with their tremendous depth of experience in deploying Itanium-based solutions."

Supermicro joins the Alliance as a longtime manufacturer and vendor of Itanium-based platforms. The company's SuperServer line employs Itanium processing technology for a range of IT environments and applications, providing powerful, highly scalable mission-critical infrastructure for IT organizations and data centers.

"Our support of the Itanium Solutions Alliance reflects our commitment to the market for Itanium-based solutions," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "We expect our customers to value the vast processing power, exceptional reliability and application flexibility that our Itanium-based servers deliver, and supporting the Alliance serves those customers, and our business, very well."

The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award honors those who have most creatively and innovatively implemented Itanium-based solutions within their organizations. Tonight's event will honor 2008 winners the University of Houston bioinformatics research team (in the Humanitarian Impact category); Protégésoft (in the Enterprise Business Application category); and S7 Software (in the Entrepreneurial Innovation category).

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Established in 1993, Supermicro emphasizes superior product design and uncompromising quality control to produce industry-leading serverboards, chassis and server systems. These Server Building Block Solutions provide benefits across many environments, including data center deployment, high-performance computing, high-end workstations, storage networks and standalone server installations. For more information on Supermicro's complete line of Itanium-based solutions, visit http://www.Supermicro.com/

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance is comprised of some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org/

NEC Servers Offer

2008-08-06T00:00:00-07:00

NEC Earns Dynamic Partitioning Qualification for Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Santa Clara, Calif., August 6, 2008 - NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, today announces that the NEC Express5800/1320Xf running Microsoft SQL Server® 2008, brings budget-friendly mainframe-class performance, functionality and high availability to mainstream IT operating environments. The Microsoft certified NEC Express5800/1320Xf is also the industry's only server qualified by Microsoft for dynamic hardware partitioning functionality on Microsoft Windows Server® 2008.

"We are excited to see our industry partners, such as NEC, build on the technologies made available with the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 release," said Dan Neault, general manager, SQL Server Marketing at Microsoft Corp. "This NEC solution helps offer dynamic partitioning, as well as on-demand scalability and serviceability, for Microsoft SQL Server environments while delivering mission critical capabilities to our valuable joint customers."

The NEC Express5800/1320xf provides Intel® Itanium®-based mainframe-class scalability for Windows Server 2008 running mission critical workloads. The capability of on-demand resources combined with the benefits of dynamic partitioning (DP) on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, currently only available on the Itanium-based NEC Express5800/1320xf server, provides new enterprise Windows/SQL database options.

"NEC is proud to work collaboratively with Microsoft in our push to bring mainframe platform functionality to mainstream Windows environments," said Mike Mitsch, general manager, Enterprise Server Division, NEC Corporation of America. "NEC is excited to be the first system provider to provide a solution that delivers on-demand scalability and mainframe class dynamic partitioning capabilities for Microsoft SQL Server. This solution delivers unsurpassed SQL scalability for enterprises of any size. While continuing to collaborate closely with Microsoft, NEC looks forward to bringing enterprise SQL customers value through innovative and serviceable solutions."

Currently benchmarked at 1,126 tpcE and $2,771.79/tpcE, the NEC Express5800/1320Xf enterprise server, with NEC S2500 storage, is among the top Microsoft SQL Server 2008 performance leaders as benchmarked by the independent third party Transaction Processing Council.

In addition, in combination with the dynamic hardware partitioning functionality available in Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, NEC's Express 5800/1320Xf is the only mainframe-class server that provides the ability to actively add memory, processor and I/O devices, and to move CPU resources across hardware partitions without service interruption within a Windows environment.

About NEC Corporation of America
NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of network, IT and identity management solutions. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications to biometric security, virtualization and digital cinema solutions. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

To read the original article at NEC, click here.

Pragma Systems Announces Support for Intel Itanium 64-Bit for Windows

2008-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

AUSTIN, Texas {July 29, 2008} Pragma Systems, a leading provider of enterprise-class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows and Windows Mobile, announces the release of Pragma FortressSSH Server, Pragma TelnetServer and Pragma ClientSuite for Intel Itanium 64-bit running under the Windows operating system. Intel Itanium based multi-processor servers provide the highest performance Microsoft Windows Server platforms. Now enterprise customers using the high-end Itanium systems will be able to run Pragma's high-performance Fortress SSH, SFTP and Telnet servers to provide secure remote access, secure file transfer and telnet management access.

"Pragma was established to bring the best Unix-class enterprise solutions to the Microsoft Windows Server platform," said Pragma's CEO and co-founder Quamrul Mina. "With Itanium native support for all our key products available today, Pragma is delighted to be the first vendor in the world with Itanium version of SSH, SFTP and Telnet servers. Pragma's leadership in Windows SSH and Telnet market is now fully established," continues Mr. Mina.

"Native Itanium processor support has been requested by many of our customers. Pragma is happy to finally finish its development and bring all its core products to the Itanium architecture," says David Kulwin, CTO and co-founder at Pragma Systems. "Itanium systems are used by our Fortune 500 customers and we are pleased to offer the industry's first SSH server, SFTP server and Telnet server for the Itanium Windows platform."

Pragma's products allow end-to-end secure remote access and management to computers across an enterprise environment. Customers have a reliable way to utilize secure system administration, application delivery and secure encrypted file transfer throughout computing environments with Pragma's product suite spanning Windows-based servers and desktops and Windows Mobile-based platforms. Pragma tested their Itanium software on HP's Itanium based Integrity servers and platforms and will work on Itanium servers from other vendors. Pragma FortessSSH Server, FortressSSH ClientSuite and TelnetServer products are now available in the native Itanium 64-bit platform running Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Datacenter Editions and Windows XP operating
systems.

About Pragma Systems, Inc.

Pragma Systems Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise class remote access and security software for Microsoft Windows & Windows Mobile platforms. Pragma is an industry leader in Secure Shell and Telnet technology and offers the most popular SSH and TelnetServer for Windows and industrial grade SSH client for the handhelds via Pragma PocketVT. The company's end-to-end solutions of servers and clients on the desktop and mobile devices provide highly secure access to corporate supply chain, CRM, distribution and warehouse applications over wireless, Bluetooth, LAN, WAN and mobile networks. Pragma Systems is an Intel Software Partner, HP Integrity Ready Partner, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and IBM PartnerWorld member. For more information contact Pragma Systems, Inc, 512-219-7270; email: pragma@pragmasys.com; visit our website at www.pragmasys.com.

To read the original release from Pragma Systems, click here.

10 Server Room Must-Haves

2008-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

Midrange Server

The midrange server category has evolved to point where it's unclear what it means. Multicore has muddied the waters and no one is looking at raw processors anymore. Still, there are servers that are neither entry-level nor high-end and that are designed to meet needs that don't fall neatly into either category...

...Readers also embraced the HP Integrity rx7640, a server that the OEM describes as midrange and well-suited for scaling to database hosting, ERP, CRM, business intelligence, data mining and data warehousing needs. The server holds up to eight dual-core Itanium processors and has 1200 GB (4x300 GB) of internal storage. Its memory capacity extends up to 256 GB, custom-designed 278pin DIMMs and bus bandwidth of 34 GB/s.

High-End Server or Mainframe

Historically, the high-end server market has been a crowded space with few players. HP and IBM typically dominate. Similarly, the pool of customers is small and deep-pocketed, yet they cannot afford downtime. Although the demographics are changing, most enterprises shopping for a mainframe fall near the Fortune 1000 line.

Therefore, it's not surprising that the traditional won out yet again. This year the HP Integrity Superdome took back top honors. It boasts more than twice the performance of the previous-generation, single-core products, and it achieves that at a reduced power consumption rate.

Perhaps the key selling point of this new generation of Superdome servers is the configuration choices available. Enterprises can choose from in 16-, 32-, and 64-socket models. Dual-core Itanium processors and the sx2000 chipset power the servers, which have no internal disks, and thus must relay on direct-attached storage (such as SCSI) or network-attached storage (e.g., Fibre Channel or high-speed Ethernet).

To read the full article at ServerWatch.com, click here.

Global server shipments, revenue up in 1Q08, Gartner and IDC report

2008-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

Worldwide server shipments for the first quarter of 2008 increased 7.6 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed 4.3 percent according to Gartner Inc.

Worldwide server revenues totaled $13.6 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached just under 2.3 million units.

"There were a number of dynamics that affected the market to produce an initial quarter of growth for 2008," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "For example, x86 server replacements were on an upswing as the year commenced, we continued to see build outs of large Web datacenters, and emerging-market growth forged ahead."

RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell in shipments but showed a small amount of growth in revenue, Hewitt said. "In this segment, shipments fell 8.4 percent while revenue grew 3.7 percent for the quarter."

To read the full article at Integrated mar.com, click here.

U.S. Drags Down Server Sales in Q1, But Weak Dollar Helps

2008-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

...By IDC's reckoning, servers based on other processor architectures--various RISC, Itanium, and mainframe processors--accounted for the remaining $6 billion in sales, up 2.5 percent. Within that group, IBM's System z mainframes raked in $1.1 billion in sales, up 10.4 percent--the highest first-quarter sales IBM has posted for the mainframe in three years, all the more remarkable considering that everyone knew that the four-core z6 processor and their z10 mainframes were expected to be announced in early 2008. IBM's share of the non-X64 platform sales in the quarter came to just over $2.5 billion, which means that the company sold just over $1.4 billion in Power servers in the quarter. (Big Blue doesn't really sell Itanium kit or other kinds of RISC iron besides Power.) Hewlett-Packard is by far the dominant seller of Itanium-based systems and brought in $1.36 billion for Itanium and RISC server sales in the first quarter, according to IDC. Sun Microsystems doesn't sell Itanium machines, but its Sparc products accounted for $1.17 billion in sales in Q1.

While blade servers have experienced good growth in the quarter and far exceeded the growth in the market at large, nonetheless the growth blades are seeing is far from the triple-digit growth that would be necessary for blade servers to become mainstream. The key blade server makers--HP and IBM--have finally understood that they need to have smaller blades that run on regular 110/120 volt wall current if they want blades to be adopted by small and medium customers. And that could help get blade growth up again in the stratosphere. But in the first quarter, blade server sales rose by 53.7 percent (the fastest growth rate in 10 quarters and no coincidence given the launch of the SMB blade products last fall) to hit $1.2 billion. Blade server sales are also being bolstered by Itanium, Power, and Sparc blades, which accounted for more than 5 percent of total blade sales, twice that of the year-ago quarter. If blades mimic the overall server market, then these blades should account for about 45 percent of the market in the coming years. There is a lot of growth left here.

To read the full article at ITJungle.com, click here.

Server shipments continue to rise

2008-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

..."There were a number of dynamics that affected the market to produce an initial quarter of growth for 2008," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "For example, x86 server replacements were on an upswing as the year commenced, we continued to see build-outs of large Web data centers, and emerging-market growth forged ahead.

"RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell in shipments but showed a small amount of growth in revenue," Hewitt noted. In this segment, shipments fell 8% while revenue grew by almost 4% for the quarter...

To read the entire article at Computerworld.com, click here.

Itanium Solutions Unveils Roadmap For 2008

2008-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium Solutions Alliance unveiled its roadmap for 2008 .The alliance also shared winners of its second annual innovation awards and its intention to expand partnerships and solutions presence in India. This years category winners are S7 Software for Entrepreneurial Innovation, Protg Software for Enterprise Business Application achievement; University of Houston for Humanitarian Impact.

"The stories of this year's winners amply demonstrates the impact of Intel Itanium technology in solving mission-critical computing challenges in a wide range of application environments. The breadth of entries was impressive and selecting a winner in each category was quite challenging. The winners and finalists solutions clearly showcase the value of an Itanium-based solution over costlier mainframes in real-life applications," said Joan Jacobs, executive director, Itanium Solutions Alliance.

S7 Software Solutions, a software services and product-based company specializing in software migration and re-engineering domain, was recognized for porting more than 2 million lines of software code of a Fortune 100 company's financial transaction processing system. Faster response time, higher availability and flexible scalability made the Itanium-based platform the perfect fit for their migration challenge. "By migrating our customer's application engine onto the Intel Itanium architecture, we helped our customer derive the benefits of Itanium's scalability and performance features including faster transaction time, secure around-the-clock processing and extensive software environment," said Phaniraj Raghavendra, software architect, S7 Software Solutions.

New breed of servers deliver energy savings

2008-06-01T00:00:00-07:00

Energy costs and infrastructure complexity are rising, right along with the pressure to go "green". These factors are contributing to higher operating costs-while computing requirements continue to grow unabated-which favor technologies that can rein in costs and simplify server management. Moreover, many IT organizations will opt for solutions that improve the cost-efficiency and performance of their existing systems.

Organizations striving for greater data center efficiency are evaluating options to achieve the following infrastructure goals: first, the transition to "greener" computing-companies are asking IT departments to dramatically raise data center energy efficiency and reduce power and cooling costs, and second, getting more from strategic technologies-the latest advances in server clustering, software parallelization and virtualization are creating more value to data centers, further lowering cost and increasing performance without "forklift" changes.

COOLING SOLUTIONS, POWERFUL PROCESSORS

Some IT facilities are beginning to run out of cooling capacity and power because air conditioning systems are maxed out and power distribution infrastructure is completely utilized. Combining hardware and software strategies, data center cooling solutions use various approaches such as optimizing airflow, scheduling server workloads off-peak and sharing power supplies between servers, with each providing incremental improvements.

One technique is to position server enclosures back-to-back, so exhaust air is carried by a dedicated channel to the cooling units. Since newly cooled air and hot exhaust air never mix, the cold air remains effective as it enters the enclosures. Using similar innovative methods, HP's Thermal Zone Mapping and Dynamic Smart Cooling solution can decrease energy costs by up to 45 percent by delivering cooling where and when it is needed the most.

Responding to pressures to improve performance per watt, CPU vendors have turned to multicore processor architecture. By running more cores at lower voltage and frequency, these processors are delivering greater computing performance, within a similar thermal envelope, than their predecessors. Launched in mid-2006, the Dual-Core Intel Itanium processor has twice the performance of previous, single-core Itanium processors, yet consumes 20 percent less power.

To read the original article at ECN Asia, click here.

Intel and Itanium Partners Gear Up for Quad-Core Tukwilas

2008-05-28T00:00:00-07:00

As you might imagine, with Hewlett-Packard being such and early and enthusiastic supporter of Itanium and basing its Integrity line and HP-UX operating system on Itanium, HP-UX is a big driver of Itanium machines. Jacobs estimates that about 40 percent of Itanium platform sales are driven by HP-UX, with Microsoft's Windows driving about 25 percent of sales and the open source Linux platform driving around 30 percent of sales. In many cases, multiple operating systems can be on the same Itanium server, whether it comes from HP or other suppliers, such as Fujitsu-Siemens, Bull, NEC, Unisys, and others. HP's OpenVMS proprietary operating system has been ported to Itanium in recent years, as have a number of other proprietary platforms such as Bull's GCOS mainframe operating system, and these drive some sales, too.

Sales growth for the Itanium platform has been steady in the United States and Canada, but growth rates are higher in other areas. According to IDC's statistics, Itanium shipments rose by only 9 percent in the Americas, with revenues rising faster at 16 percent. (That means companies are buying beefier machines than they were.) But in Europe and Asia, the growth is really phenomenal, even if the base of machines is probably a lot smaller. Itanium-based system revenues rose by an aggregate of 35.4 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with shipments rising 56.3 percent, which is a lot higher than in the Americas, obviously, and also suggesting that these are relatively young and smaller Itanium shops, which stands to reason given the spread of corporations around this part of the globe. (Europe has a lot more midrange companies because of the fact that it is many countries in an area a little larger than the United States, which is one country, at least on the map until you try to run for president. . . . ) In the Asia/Pacific region, which is undergoing explosive growth, very large companies are plunking down mainframe, System i, Unix, Windows, and Linux systems as they computerize heavily and consolidate data centers, and that is why the 45 percent shipment growth for Itanium machines drove 61 percent revenue growth in 2007.

To read the original article at ITJungle.com, click here.

The Server Biz Enjoys the X64 Upgrade Cycle in Q1

2008-05-27T00:00:00-07:00

...In terms of platforms, Gartner said that sales of RISC/Itanium platforms running Unix accounted for $3.79 billion in sales, up 3.7 percent, with IBM getting 34.2 percent of the pie with $1.3 billion in sales, up 2.9 percent, trailed by Sun, with $1.12 billion, down 3.5 percent, and HP with $1.02 billion, up 6.1 percent thanks to relatively strong Integrity sales. Fujitsu-Siemens had a relatively tiny share of the Unix server market, with $194 million in sales, up 9.3 percent, followed by NEC, with a stunning 907 percent growth rate to $109 million in sales. Other vendors accounted for only $43 million in sales, down 44.4 percent. This market is mature, like crazy, and shipments fell by 8.4 percent to 94,402 units as companies consolidate multiple Unix images on bigger iron.

Over on the X86 and X64 platform, sales in the first quarter of 2008 came to $7.56 billion, up 6.9 percent, with HP getting 35.3 percent of the pie with $2.66 billion in sales. Dell came in second with its $1.64 billion, garnering 21.7 percent of this platform's global sales in the three months, followed by IBM's $1.17 billion, a 15.5 percent share. Fujitsu-Siemens posted $326 million in X86 and X64 server sales in the quarter, according to Gartner, followed by NEC, with $225 million, giving them 4.3 percent and 3 percent share, respectively. X86/X64 server shipments across all vendors rose by 8.6 percent to just under 2 million units.

Across all platforms, Linux server shipments were up 13.9 percent, compared to 6.8 percent shipment growth for Windows machines. Most of the Linux and Windows shipments are on X64 boxes these days, but there is some Windows revenue on Itanium-based machines and there is a fair amount of Linux revenue on Itanium, Power, and mainframe kit, too.

That leaves the category called Other, where IBM mainframes, Power-based i5/OS and i machinery, NonStop fault tolerant boxes, and Itanium-based OpenVMS, and a few other mainframe boxes get pushed. In terms of revenues, which really matters for these machines, if you do the math, sales were down 2.7 percent to $2.21 billion, and this is including Itanium machines running Windows and Linux thrown into the mix. All told, this Other category accounted for 9,747 machines, a decline of 25.9 percent compared to the year ago quarter. That seems like a very tiny amount of machines, but the average selling price for these boxes in the quarter came in at $226,700. Not bad business, if you can get it.

To read the entire article at ITJungle.com, click here.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance to Expand Partnerships in India

2008-05-26T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium® Solutions Alliance in collaboration with the world's leading IT companies unveiled its roadmap for 2008 at a special media round table for the Indian media. The alliance also shared winners of its second annual innovation awards and its intention to expand partnerships and solutions presence in India. This year's category winners are S7 Software for Entrepreneurial Innovation, Protégé Software for Enterprise Business Application achievement; University of Houston for Humanitarian Impact.

S7 Software Solutions, a software services and product-based company specializing in software migration and re-engineering domain, was recognized for porting more than 2 million lines of software code of a Fortune 100 company's financial transaction processing system. Faster response time, higher availability and flexible scalability made the Itanium®-based platform the perfect fit for their migration challenge. Enterprise Business Application category winner Protégésoft developed Financial Portfolio Builder (FPB), a comprehensive financial investment system that runs on four-way HP Integrity servers based on Intel® Itanium® processors, and supports the entire spectrum of portfolio management on a single unified platform. FPB helps rebalance thousands of client accounts in a matter of minutes, optimizing risk and return exposure and providing greater customer service at lower cost and better performance. Investment banks have already achieved annualized portfolio returns of more than 22 percent with an efficiency of almost 30,000 times faster than the conventional method.

The alliance has forged a partnership with Microsoft and reached an agreement with Sophos (www.sophos.com), a world leader in IT security and control, for a Q4 2008 release of Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux on Itanium-based systems for Red Hat EL 4.x and Red Hat EL 5.x besides showcasing technology preview of Sun Microsystems Java 6.0 on Itanium-based servers.

Worldwide server shipments grew 8% while revenue grew 4% in Q108 - Gartner

2008-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

Worldwide server shipments for the first quarter of 2008 increased by 7,6% over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed by 4,3% according to Gartner. Worldwide server revenues totalled $13,6bn for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached just under 2,3m units.

"There were a number of dynamics that affected the market to produce an initial quarter of growth for 2008," says Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice-president at Gartner. "For example, x86 server replacements were on an upswing as the year commenced, we continued to see build outs of large Web data centres, and emerging market growth forged ahead."

"RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell in shipments but showed a small amount of growth in revenue," Hewitt adds. "In this segment, shipments fell by 8,4% while revenue grew by 3,7% for the quarter."

HP and IBM continue to vie for market leadership in the worldwide server market based on revenue. HP took the overall revenue share lead over IBM by a narrow 0,7% for the quarter. HP had increases in both its ProLiant and HP Integrity brands which offset some revenue declines in its other brands.

This produced a year-to-year revenue increase of 10,3% for the period and pushed HP's share up by 1,6%. HP also increased its worldwide blade server revenue share to just over 13% compared to the same quarter last year.

Dell, Fujitsu/FSC, and IBM all had revenue growth for the period at 6,6%, 4,9% and 2,1% respectively. Sun was the only global vendor not to have server revenue growth - it had a slight decline at just less than 1%.

In server shipments, HP grew by just over 7,8% compared to the first quarter of 2007, and retained its worldwide server shipment lead. The share gap between it and second-place Dell decreased by 1,5 percentage points for the quarter.

HP finished the quarter with just over a 30% shipment share for the period. HP's ProLiant and HP Integrity product lines produced shipment increases with a slight increase in shipments for HP NonStop as well. Its remaining brand, AlphaServer, had a shipment decline. HP pushed its blade server shipment share just over 8% for the quarter.

Dell posted 15,8% growth for the quarter. IBM increased by 2,3% and Sun grew by 6,6%. Fujitsu/FSC was the only global vendor to decline - it shrunk by 2,6%.

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), server shipments totalled 715 000 units in the first quarter of 2008, a 9,2% increase from the same period last year. Server revenue totalled $4,6bn in the first quarter of 2008, a 6,9% increase over the same quarter last year.

"We continued to see the robust growth in the first quarter of 2008 that we saw through 2007," says Errol Rasit, senior research analyst at Gartner.

"Strong demand in developing markets such as Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa and continued spend in mature markets on x86 servers bolstered growth this quarter. While x86 servers volumes grew by 10%, revenues increased by 11%."

Although RISC-Itanium Unix servers in the first quarter of 2008 achieved a 3,2% increase in revenue terms year-on-year, volumes for the year declined by 2,2%. This shows a slightly stronger demand for high-end systems. Availability of new models for both IBM system Z and FSC BS2000 in the first quarter of 2008 generated increased investment from their respective installed base.

In server shipments, HP retained the largest market share and maintained its No.1 position, with shipments increasing by 10% year-on-year. Rasit adds: "Dell outpaced its nearest rivals with 18,4% year-on-year growth. Sun Microsystems exhibited the strongest year-on-year growth of the top five server vendors at 19,3%, however, the vendor still only accounted for 4,1% share."

HP Beats IBM In Server Revenue

2008-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in the first quarter toppled IBM (NYSE: IBM) from the top of the server market based on revenue, besting Big Blue by less than 1%, market research firm Gartner said Thursday.

Total worldwide server shipments rose by 7.6% over the same quarter a year ago to 2.3 million units, and revenue climbed 4.3% to $13.6 billion, Gartner said. Shipments and revenue from x86 servers increased. RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell in shipments, but grew slightly in revenue...

To read the entire article at InformationWeek.com, click here.

Intel Touts Its Own Itanium Platform

2008-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

A Santa Clara-based technology company today is hailing three IT groups - one dealing in software services, another in financial investments and a third in high-performance computing - for using its own "Intel (News - Alert) Itanium" architecture in their work.

The so-called "Itanium Solutions Alliance" was formed to transform the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture.

Intel officials unveiled three "winners" of annual awards at a meeting in India, where the company said it hopes to do more business. Joan Jacobs, the alliance's executive director, said the list of winners "demonstrates the impact of Intel Itanium technology in solving mission-critical computing challenges in a wide range of application environments."

"The breadth of entries was impressive and selecting a winner in each category was quite challenging," Jacobs said. "The winners' and finalists' solutions clearly showcase the value of an Itanium-based solution over costlier mainframes in real-life applications."

The companies she referred to are: S7 Software for "Entrepreneurial Innovation," Protégé Software for "Enterprise Business Application," and the University of Houston for "Humanitarian Impact."

The entrepreneurial award went to S7 for porting more than 2 million lines of software code of a Fortune 100 company's financial transaction processing system, according to Intel.

S7's software architect, Phaniraj Raghavendra, said the Intel platform worked because it offers fast response time and flexible scalability.

"By migrating our customer's application engine onto the Intel Itanium architecture, we helped our customer derive the benefits of Itanium's scalability and performance features including faster transaction time, secure around-the-clock processing and extensive software environment," Raghavendra said.

Intel recognized Protégésoft for developing what it calls the "Financial Portfolio Builder," a system that runs on four-way HP Integrity servers based on Intel Itanium processors.

According to Intel, the system can rebalance thousands of client accounts in a matter of minutes, optimizing risk and return exposure and providing greater customer service at lower cost and better performance. Intel officials say that investment banks see annualized portfolio returns of more than 22 percent with an efficiency of almost 30,000 times faster than other methods.

Finally, University of Houston researchers Dr. Yuriy Fofanov and Dr. Lennart Johnsson received recognition for advancing the field of genomic sequencing to identify and monitor microbial genetic diversity. According to Intel, Itanium-based systems powered the computational tools the team used in their research into global warming, human activities and toxic waste.

Server Shipments, Sales Rise Despite More Virtualization: Gartner

2008-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

...HP remains the world's primary supplier of x86-based servers, with a 30.9 percent of the market in terms of shipments and a 35.3 percent of the market in terms of revenue. Dell, IBM, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens, and NEC Corp., Tokyo, Japan, rounded out the top five in both shipment and revenue.

Worldwide RISC-based and Itanium- based server shipments slipped 8.4 percent compared to last year, with all top five vendors seeing a drop in sales. However, revenue for this class of servers grew 3.7 percent over last year, with all top five vendors seeing revenue growth except for Sun, which saw revenue drop as its Solaris Unix-based focus continues to shift more towards x86-based servers, Hewitt said.

Shipments of servers with the Linux operating system grew the fastest year-over-year, up 13.9 percent compared to the 6.8 percent growth of shipments of servers with Windows, Hewitt said. However, the overall base of Linux-based servers is still only half that of Windows-based servers, so in terms of absolute numbers, Windows- based server shipments grew faster.

To read the entire article at CRN.com, click here.

HP Ships Insight Dynamics for Managing Physical and Virtual Machines

2008-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

...With Insight Dynamics-VSE, HP is taking a set of technologies called SmartSolver, which was created by HP Labs for the company's utility computing efforts, and merging it with these two tools--Insight Manager and VSE--to create a tool that can do real-time capacity planning for physical and virtual machine environments and provide similar information on energy consumption--all from within the Insight Manager console. According to Mark Linesch, vice president of infrastructure software at HP, SmartSolver got its initial testing inside VSE for HP-UX (the load balancing and capacity planning code, specifically), but has been updated to include Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware ESX Server hypervisors on X86 and X64 iron; it will soon include support for XenServer from Citrix Systems and the impending HyperV (formerly Viridian) hypervisor from Microsoft for Windows Server 2008. (HyperV is not available on the Itanium edition of Windows Server 2008, by the way, but nPars and vPars can support Windows and Linux on Itanium iron now thanks to work done by HP's techies.)

To read the orginal article at ITJungle.com, click here.

Itanium Group Aims for Mainframes

2008-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

Despite RISC-based (define) systems accounting for just a fraction of the server market, it remains a growth sector, and the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) is pushing forward with new hardware based on the first quad-core Itanium processors due next year.

Codenamed Tukwila, the quad-core Itanium will be a huge chip, with more than two billion transistors. Thanks to four cores, two on-die memory controllers, a 30 MB L2 cache and the new QuickPath Interconnect interface, Tukwila-based systems will more than double the performance of existing systems.

"You'd want to see a doubling of performance when going from two to four cores, but we're seeing more than a doubling," said Rob Shiveley, worldwide marketing manager in the mission critical server platform group at Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). "This is due in part to the Quickpath Interconnects and the on-die memory controllers. Any time you can move the memory controller into the processor you're going to get better performance."

To read the full article at internetNews.com, click here.

Red Hat Continues Feature Expansion with RHEL 5.2

2008-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

...Just in case you didn't realize this (I certainly didn't until recently), Red Hat is the only commercial Linux distributor that is supporting the Xen hypervisor on Itanium processors, which was previewed back with RHEL 5.0 more than a year ago and which was officially supported with RHEL 5.1 in November 2007. In general, according to Riek, the Itanium variant of Xen will lag the X64 variant by about six months, which means it will be one release behind.

With the 5.2 update, Red Hat is also refreshing the stack of productivity software for end users in its Enterprise Linux 5.2 Desktop spin, including OpenOffice 2.3 and Firefox 3. The company has also updated graphics drivers and did a lot of work on the suspend/resume functions of laptops, which are cranky on all operating systems--Linux being no exception.

Customers who have subscriptions for either server or desktop variants of Red Hat Linux can get the 5.2 updates for free, as usual...

To read the entire article at ITJungle.com, click here.

S7 Software announced winner of 2008 Itanium� Solutions Alliance Innovation Award in the Entrepreneurial Innovation category

2008-05-20T00:00:00-07:00

S7 Software has been announced the winner of the second annual Itanium® Solutions Alliance Innovation Award in the Entrepreneurial Innovation category. The award recognizes S7 Software's innovative approach in successfully porting a high transaction processing database application onto the Intel® Itanium® architecture.

Announcing the award, the Itanium Solutions Alliance press release said, "S7 Software Solutions won the Entrepreneurial Innovation award for their unique work porting onto the Itanium architecture, more than 2 million lines of software code for a Fortune 100 company's transaction processing system, which supports financial institution processing, mortgage loan processing and other financial service products."

Joan Jacobs, the executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, congratulated S7 Software, "The Itanium Solutions Alliance congratulates S7 Software and its story clearly demonstrates the impact of Intel Itanium technology on solving mission-critical computing challenges and enhancing business results. The breadth of entries was impressive and selecting a single winner in each category was extremely challenging."

"We are happy to win the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award, which recognizes S7 Software's innovative approach to Itanium-based system migration and our expertise to deliver advanced products with very high quality and on schedule, while reducing costs substantially," said Manjunath M Gowda, CEO of S7 Software.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance's annual global award program recognizes innovation and achievement using Itanium-based solutions to solve complex humanitarian, business and entrepreneurial challenges. Each winner receives a $50,000 U.S. cash prize or can make a charitable donation to an organization of their choice.

To read the original release at SGI.com, click here.

Computers With Next-Gen Itanium Expected Early Next Year

2008-05-19T00:00:00-07:00

Computer manufacturers are expected to start offering systems based on Intel's next-generation Itanium processor, codenamed Tukwila, early next year, offering users of the RISC-based chip their first quad-core option.

Tukwila, which Intel expects manufacturers to start testing toward the end of the fourth quarter this year, gives Itanium a much-needed boost in performance against its biggest rival, IBM's Power6 processor, which is faster than the current version of Itanium, experts say.

Tukwila, the first quad-core Itanium, will be built using a next-generation manufacturing process that shrinks the size of transistors on each core to 65 nanometers from the current 90 nm. The process means Tukwila will have 2 billion transistors, providing a significant increase in speed. The chip will also have 30 MB of on-die cache and dual integrated memory controllers for more balanced performance, Intel said.

To read the original article from InformationWeek, click here.

Itanium supporters remain optimistic

2008-05-19T00:00:00-07:00

Supporters of Intel's Itanium platform are hoping that the server chip will finally take off this year.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance, an advocacy group with members including Microsoft and Intel, claims that Itanium has become the fastest-growing chip on the market.

The group also claims that the upcoming Tukwila generation of the chip will make Itanium even more popular.

"Microsoft sees a great opportunity to bring mainframe [computing] from elite companies to the masses and make this a volume type," Ward Ralston, group product manager at Microsoft's server division, told vnunet.com."

First introduced in 2001, Itanium was intended to lead the next generation of high-performance business servers.

However, sales wobbled after slow adoption, and few companies ported applications. By 2006 some were wondering whether Itanium would ever live up to expectations.

"We recognised that there were a lot of factors that were in our control and some that were not," said Rob Shiveley, worldwide marketing manager at Intel's mission critical server platform group.

Shiveley credits the chip's slow start in part to a "perfect storm" when Itanium's launch ran into the dotcom crash and the resulting economic downturn.

"We [now] feel like we have got our act together, and we are executing the designs very nicely," he told vnunet.com.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance noted that the number of Itanium applications has jumped from 5,000 to more than 13,000 since 2005. Most recently, security firm Sophos joined the Itanium camp.

The group is also optimistic about Itanium's design qualities, including the ability to recover from hardware crashes on the fly and allow administrators to install or remove new hardware without powering systems down.

Itanium advocates also cite the chip's design as an advantage, suggeting that the focus on multi-threading and low frequencies lends itself to a market increasingly fond of lower power and extensive virtualisation.

Once struggling to stay afloat, Itanium's backers see a new kind of "perfect storm" brewing which they feel will sweep the chip to the top of the heap in the server world.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Reports Major Gains Worldwide for Itanium�-based Systems

2008-05-19T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium-based Solutions Expand Collaborations with Industry Leaders

SAN RAMON, Calif., May 19, 2008 - The Itanium^® Solutions Alliance today announced significant momentum in multiple areas, including worldwide growth of Itanium^®-based systems, updates on its partnership with Microsoft, a new agreement with Sophos and a technology preview of Sun Microsystems Java 6.0 on Itanium-based servers.

Worldwide, annual Itanium-based factory system revenue and system volume continued to grow solidly in 2007, with a year-over-year increase of 30.8 and 36.3 percent, respectively. The Asia-Pacific region led the way with year-over-year growth in factory system revenue and system volume of 61 and 45 percent. In EMEA (Western Europe, Central Eastern Europe and Middle East Africa), factory system revenue and volume experienced 35.4 percent and 56.3 percent growth, respectively. Itanium-based factory system revenue grew 35 percent and in the Americas region (US, Canada and Latin America) continued to make progress with 27 percent system volume growth and 41 percent in factory system revenue increases.[1]

"Based on our most recent reports, Intel Itanium architecture is now the fastest growing server processor type in the world and is continuing to help drive the growth of the worldwide server market," said Matt Eastwood, Group Vice President of IDC's Enterprise Platform Group.

The Alliance and Microsoft have been collaborating in multiple areas to drive the adoption of mission-critical computing with Itanium-based servers running Windows Server. More customers recognize the business value of deploying Windows Server workloads on Intel Itanium industry standard servers, for higher levels of scalability, reliability and flexibility. Together, they are working closely to deliver new programs and tools to help businesses migrate from aging and costly legacy RISC systems and mainframes to more cost-effective and agile Itanium-based platforms. Currently, one-quarter of the more than 13,000 Itanium-based applications are Windows Server-based, and customers are seeing the investment protection of enterprise Windows Server solutions running on Itanium for their mission-critical workloads.

The two organizations have also been actively engaged in a targeted initiative for the financial services industry, which promotes the Microsoft operating system and Itanium-based platform solution to the core banking industry as a preferred platform for their mission-critical applications. The campaign launched in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and is slated to start in Western Europe mid-year and culminate at the SIBOS conference in Vienna in the fall. Microsoft is partnering with key banking software package providers including Alliance charter members SAP, Lansa, Open Solutions, Fair Isaac Corporation, FircoSoft, Slater Labs, and Alliance platform providers, to support banks and other financial services organizations wanting to transition off their costly legacy mainframes to Itanium-based systems.

Microsoft, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions recently pledged its support in a public statement around its .NET Framework stating it is "excited to work with the members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance and is continuing to further enhance the performance of the .NET Framework on Intel Itanium architecture."

Alliance Founders are also recording a number of Windows and Itanium-based achievements:

Fujitsu announced that its PRIMEQUEST 580A posted the fastest results in the industry on the two-tier SAP^® Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark on a system running Microsoft^® Windows Server^® and the SAP ERP application Release 6.0.
The first TPC-H at 10TB performance benchmark published with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on Itanium-based HP Integrity servers.[2]
In February, NEC announced the industry's first enterprise server with dynamic hardware partitioning functionality for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 - the NEC Express5800/1320Xf. Additionally, the company's recently published world-record TPC-E benchmark result on SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is a clear indicator that Windows-based solutions on the Itanium-based platform are excellent forward-looking choices for enterprise customers.[3]

The Alliance's work with Sun Microsystems continues and their combined efforts were showcased at the recent JavaOne conference with a technology preview that showed Itanium-optimized Java SE 6 running on an Itanium-based server in several different SOA scenarios. "This is an important step to increase the availability of Java-based software and broaden solutions choices for users of Intel Itanium architecture," noted Joan Jacobs, Itanium Solutions Alliance executive director.

The Alliance has also reached agreement with Sophos (www.sophos.com), a world leader in IT security and control, for a Q4 2008 release of Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux on Itanium-based systems for Red Hat EL 4.x and Red Hat EL 5.x. "We are pleased to work with the Alliance on an Itanium-based solution that will expand the opportunity for business, education and government organizations to exercise complete protection and control against known and unknown security threats," said Steve Munford, CEO of Sophos. Sophos also supports HP-UX, OpenVMS and Windows on Itanium-based systems.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together toward a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. For information about Itanium-based solutions that bolster mission-critical computing, please visit www.itaniumsolutions.com. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

TPC Benchmark, QphH, $/QphH, TPC-E, tpsH, and $/tpsE are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council.

*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

[1] Source: IDC Q4 2007 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, February 2008

[2] As of February 27, 2008: 63,651 QphH@10,000GB, 38.54 US$ per QphH@10000GB, and availability date of 08/30/08.

[3] As for February 27, 2008: 1,126.49 tpsE, 2,771.79 US$/tpsE, and availability date of 08/30/08.

Itanium Solutions Alliance Announces 2008 Innovation Award Winners

2008-05-19T00:00:00-07:00

Unique Itanium-based solutions advance environmental protection research, empower financial services industry and increase customer satisfaction

SAN RAMON, Calif., May 19, 2008 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the winners of its second annual Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award. The global award program recognizes innovation and achievement using Intel® Itanium® processor technology to solve complex humanitarian, business and entrepreneurial challenges. Each winner receives a $50,000 U.S. cash prize or can make a charitable donation to an organization of their choice. This year's category winners are University of Houston bioinformatics research team for Humanitarian Impact; Protégésoft for Enterprise Business Application achievement; and S7 Software for Entrepreneurial Innovation.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance congratulates our three winners. Their stories clearly demonstrate the impact of Intel Itanium technology on solving mission-critical computing challenges in a wide range of application environments. The breadth of entries was impressive and selecting a single winner in each category was extremely challenging. The winners' and finalists' solutions clearly showcase the value of an Itanium®-based solution over costlier mainframes in real-life applications," said Joan Jacobs, executive director, Itanium Solutions Alliance.

Humanitarian Impact winner University of Houston researchers Drs. Yuriy Fofanov and Lennart Johnsson and team developed an application using high-performance computing and the latest advances in genomic sequencing to identify and monitor microbial genetic diversity. Itanium-based systems power the computational tools the team needs to advance their research into global warming, human activities and toxic waste in efforts to protect humanity, other organisms and combat greenhouse gases that are harmful to the environment. The university powered their solution using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP rx5670 and rx8620 and SGI Altix 3700 servers.

"The high performance computing power of Intel Itanium processors makes it possible for scientists to better navigate the microbial landscape, which is essential in our research as we analyze critical genetic information," said Dr. Fofanov, director, Bioinformatics Laboratory, University of Houston. "Itanium-based systems provide the memory bandwidth we need to store special data structures required to manipulate genomic information In addition, Itanium's high availability launches us toward initiating new research projects that will advance human progress in environmental protection, public health and safety, sustainable energy and many other research areas."

Enterprise Business Application category winner Protégésoft replaced its outdated and cumbersome legacy system for its clients with Intel Itanium architecture to take advantage of availability features on their Itanium-based system. Protégésoft developed Financial Portfolio Builder (FPB), a comprehensive financial investment system that runs on four-way HP Integrity servers based on Intel Itanium processors and running on Microsoft Windows Server 2003. FPB supports the entire spectrum of portfolio management from account setup, account maintenance, investment allocation, monitoring and dynamic rebalancing, reporting and more, all running on a single unified platform. For financial institutions, FPB helps rebalance thousands of client accounts in a matter of minutes, optimizing risk and return exposure and providing greater customer service at lower cost and better performance. By using this tool, clients of investment banks achieved annualized portfolio returns of more than 22 percent with an efficiency of almost 30,000 times faster than the conventional method.

"The Itanium chip and platform helped tremendously to provide the required processing power with an exceptional degree of reliability and robustness," said Kumaran Pillai, CEO, Protégésoft. "Itanium's flexible and scalable architecture increased ROI, allowing investment banks to process thousands of client accounts in minutes."

S7 Software Solutions won the Entrepreneurial Innovation award for their unique work porting more than 2 million lines of software code onto the Intel Itanium architecture. The process was for a Fortune 100 company's transaction system, which supported financial institution processing, mortgage loan processing and other service products. Faster response time, higher availability and flexible scalability made the Itanium-based platform the perfect fit for their migration challenge. The company's solution ran on HP-UX 11i and Linux RHEL 4 on a Dual Core Intel Itanium processor.

"By migrating our customer's application engine onto the Intel Itanium architecture, we helped our customer derive the benefits of Itanium's scalability and performance features including faster transaction time, secure around-the-clock processing and extensive software environment," said Phaniraj Raghavendra, software architect, S7 Software Solutions.

Eleven industry experts made up the judging panel for this year's Innovation Award program. Judges reviewed Award applications based on level of difficulty, results produced and originality. Entrants applied to one of the three categories and were asked to demonstrate one of the following criteria:
•Humanitarian Impact applications needed to show an impact on humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts;

•Enterprise Business Application entries were asked to prove either hard business results, such as cost savings and ROI or soft business impact, including customer satisfaction and new product development; or

•Entrepreneurial Innovation category, open to privately held entities with annual revenues less than $25 million in the previous fiscal year, sought to recognize enhanced business results through deployment of Itanium-based systems achievements in areas such as IT consolidation, increased ROI, increased customer satisfaction and new product development.

For more information about the Innovation Award or the winning organizations, visit www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org/programs/innovationaward2008/.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together toward a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. For information about Itanium-based solutions that bolster mission-critical computing, please visit www.itaniumsolutions.com. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About the University of Houston's Bioinformatics Laboratory, TLC2 and ACRL
Researchers at the University of Houston are committed to studying and analyzing microbial communities, which play a key role in environmental changes, human activities and the environment. (www.bioinfo.uh.edu) The Texas Learning and Computation Center (TLC2) fosters and supports interdisciplinary research, education and training in computational sciences and engineering. TLC2 has state-of-the-art computation, visualization and educational facilities for environmental studies, biological, biomedical and energy research, undergraduate and graduate education and teacher training. (http://www.tlc2.uh.edu.) The Advanced Computing Research Laboratory (ACRL) carries out research on innovative ways to harness computational resources for scientific and engineering applications and participates in several national and international research efforts in high-performance computing, storage and networking. (www.cs.uh.edu/~johnsson)

About Protégésoft
Protégésoft is a leading provider of professional services for sites utilizing Microsoft's Suite of Products and Technologies and delivers fully integrated solutions that are flexible, scalable and cost effective. (www.protegesoft.com)

About S7 Software Solutions
S7 Software is a software services and product-based company specializing in software migration and re-engineering domain. They offer proven migration methodologies and in-house developed automated tools to ensure a predictable and measurable outcome. (www.s7software.com)

© 2008. Itanium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.
*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
# # #

Fujitsu Achieves world-record performance on two-tier SAP� SD Standard Benchmark running on Microsoft Windows

2008-04-17T00:00:00-07:00

Tokyo, April 17, 2008 — Fujitsu Limited today announced the immediate availability of a new line of mission-critical IA servers, the PRIMEQUEST 520A/540A/580A, built around the newest Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 9100 series processor.

Fujitsu also announced that the PRIMEQUEST 580A posted the fastest results in the industry on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD)⁽¹⁾ Standard Application Benchmark on a system running Microsoft® Windows Server® and the SAP ERP application Release 6.0. Through these results, Fujitsu demonstrates that PRIMEQUEST servers deliver the world's highest performance on the two-tier SA

P SD Standard Application Benchmark running both Windows Server®⁽²⁾ and Linux^(3).

Overview of the PRIMEQUEST Mission-Critical IA Server

The PRIMEQUEST line of mission-critical servers combines the open-standard architecture of Itanium® processors and Linux and Windows Server® operating systems with the high-reliability hardware technology Fujitsu has accumulated through its long track record in mainframe systems.

The new PRIMEQUEST server platform is ideally suited to open-standard environments requiring high reliability and scalability, for such applications as databases, ERP solutions, mission-critical system restructuring, and scientific computing.

PRIMEQUEST 520A, 540A, 580A

The mid-range PRIMEQUEST 520, and the high-end PRIMEQUEST 540 and PRIMEQUEST 580 models, which were introduced in July 2006, have now been upgraded with the latest Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 9100 series of processors, to deliver the PRIMEQUEST 520A, PRIMEQUEST 540A, PRIMEQUEST 580A models, with up to 8/16/32 CPUs, respectively. In particular, the high-end PRIMEQUEST 540A and PRIMEQUEST 580A models have achieved an increase in front side bus clock frequency from 533 MHz to 667 MHz.

New Features

To complement the latest operating systems, the PRIMEQUEST 540A and PRIMEQUEST 580A models now include dynamic partitioning, making it possible to dynamically change hardware configurations that support partitioning.

With systems running Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 5.1 and Microsoft Windows Server® 2008, dynamic partitioning makes it possible to balance work load among system boards while the systems are still running. If CPU or memory demands increase due to increased data volumes or the number of users, backup system boards automatically perform load sharing to increase processing capacity and ensure the continuity of service.

In addition, with systems running Windows Server® 2008, system boards can be swapped live, so that if a system board starts to show signs of failure, a backup can be swapped in without interrupting the continuity of service, to minimize any potential business loss.

Click here for the original release, including tech specifications

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Amasses Support for Next-Generation Processor

2008-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium^®-based systems achieve record gains in Asia-Pacific Region

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Shanghai, April 2, 2008 - The Itanium^® Solutions Alliance today announced another series of positive indicators that point to strong and growing support for Itanium^®-based systems industry wide. The Asia-Pacific region experienced record gains in Itanium-based system volume and revenue. Additionally, the Alliance continues to closely collaborate with Microsoft for a series of activities.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance is working with Microsoft to advance mission-critical computing on the Itanium-based platform. With the release of Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems, Microsoft has delivered a solid foundation aimed at highly scalable solutions for business-critical workloads such as database, LOB and custom applications. Microsoft's Financial Services Industry group has been working with the Alliance to launch a program to increase awareness with bank executives around the Microsoft and Itanium-based platform as a viable alternative to their legacy mainframe solutions.

"With Intel's upcoming quad-core Tukwila processor, Windows Server solutions running on Itanium-based systems will provide an even more scalable, reliable, agile and dynamic datacenter foundation for our customers," said Bill Laing, general manager Windows Server & Solutions division at Microsoft.

Alliance Founder NEC's recently published world-record TPC-E benchmark result on SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is also a clear indicator that Windows-based solutions on the Itanium-based platform are excellent forward-looking choices for enterprise customers. "NEC and other Founders of the Itanium Solutions Alliance are excited to design and build Tukwila-based systems which will be the powerful foundation for tomorrow's high-end computing solutions," said Yukio Ito, Senior Vice President, NEC Corporation. "Intel's continued innovation and significant enhancements with Tukwila - quad-core technology, massive 30 megabyte on-die cache, improved RAS features and QuickPath interconnect - all point to the continued strength and bright future of Itanium."

Sales of Itanium-based systems continue to show tremendous progress in multiple categories. In Q4 2007, Itanium-based worldwide system revenue and system volume showed gains of 31 and 36 percent (year-over-year), with APAC leading all regions with increases of 63 and 45 percent, respectively.[1]

Alliance Founder HP also applauded the Intel^® Itanium^® processor's roadmap: "HP is building on its strong track record of success with the Intel Itanium processor family and actively testing the Tukwila processor," said Martin Fink, Senior Vice President and General Manager Business Critical Systems, HP. "Based on our experience, we expect developers will also find Tukwila to be a high quality and robust processor, with improved flexibility, scalability and performance. We've already booted four key operating systems (Linux, Windows, HP-UX and Open VMS) on Tukwila-based Integrity servers."

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

###

[1] Source: IDC Q4 2007 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, February 2008

5 Reasons to Worry About Your DNS and One Way to Secure It

2008-03-10T00:00:00-07:00

"Security is a complete myth on the Internet." That's the message a hacker group posted on 10 European Nintendo sites in 2001. Though "complete myth" may be an overstatement, those hackers had a good point. The Internet was vulnerable back then. Unfortunately, it is just as vulnerable today.

Among the most serious points of vulnerability are the Domain Name System (DNS) servers that lie at the heart of Internet functionality. The DNS translates domain names (names of computer hosts) into numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in the same way a phone book links people's names to phone numbers. Thirteen root DNS servers form the backbone of all Internet operations, but large businesses and ISPs typically have their own DNS servers. If those servers go down, so does an organization's website, email and Internet connectivity. Phone service will also fail if businesses are running voice-over-IP, which is the foundation for today's unified communications solutions.

Is there reason to be concerned about your DNS server? In fact, there are five reasons:

1. Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can overwhelm a DNS server by flooding it with traffic, so it has no capacity left to support legitimate requests. Such attacks increased 50-fold from 2004 to 2006, and are being used not only to disrupt the operations of target companies, but also to extort money.

2. Website Defacement and Blocking are often accomplished by redirecting traffic to a spoofed site via DNS cache poisoning or direct compromise of a DNS server. According to the CSI FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, six percent of organizations reported website defacement incidents in 2006.

3. Phishing and Pharming attacks fool users into providing personal financial information. Phishing relies on e-mail, while Pharming causes a DNS server to redirect users to a spoofed website. Both kinds of attacks are at epidemic levels.

4. DNS Server Compromise is common, and provides hackers with a powerful resource for further attacks. A popular strategy is to install "rootkits" that allow the hacker to commandeer the system at will, yet are virtually impossible to detect. These attacks not only compromise the DNS server, but can provide a gateway for attacking other systems and applications.

5. DNS performance limitations can lead to system failure during any sudden traffic increase. This common problem will become even more critical as enterprises move toward Unified Communications Solutions and next-generation collaborative applications that multiply DNS workloads, as well as new technologies such as peer-to-peer broadcasting, IPv6, RFID, and Web Services.

To protect against these challenges, companies typically resort to costly and complex safeguards, including hardened operating systems, endless security patching, over-configured DNS servers and expensive network security consultants. These efforts help to protect the DNS server, but they do not eliminate its fundamental vulnerability. Today's widely deployed DNS systems are built on complex hardware and software that were simply not designed for high security. Because of the enormous complexity, hackers typically discover new vulnerabilities as fast as old ones are patched. The result is a costly and never-ending race in which the good guys are always vulnerable to the very latest attacks. Fortunately, there's a better way.

A purpose-built DNS solution can offer an innovative, low-cost approach to combating all the DNS vulnerabilities described above. A purpose-built DNS solution can have these unique properties:

1. It is most likely deployed on Intel Itanium architecture, which provides security features, such as hardware-protected memory compartments and a two-stack model with a separate register for return addresses.

To read the original article at NetworkWorldAsia, click here.

NEC Offers Industry�s First Dynamic Hardware Partitioning Server for Microsoft Windows Server 2008

2008-02-27T00:00:00-07:00

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, today offers the industry's first enterprise server with dynamic hardware partitioning functionality for Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 - the NEC Express5800/1320Xf. This advancement in affordable mainframe-class reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) and flexibility is yet another high point of seven years of collaboration between Microsoft and NEC.

"NEC is proud that Microsoft chose to work with us to deliver the functionality of dynamic hardware partitioning with the new features of Windows Server 2008," said Mike Mitsch, general manager, Enterprise Server Division, NEC Corporation of America. "This solution allows enterprises of any size to achieve new levels of consolidation while delivering unsurpassed availability. We look forward to seeing NEC's and Microsoft's dynamic partitioning capability provide tremendous customer value for crucial applications - such as SQL Server and virtualization - in terms of continuous availability and highly serviceable solutions that can scale and are easy to manage."

The NEC Express5800/1320Xf provides Intel® Itanium®-based mainframe-class scalability for Windows Server 2008 running mission critical workloads.

According to Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president, Server Markets, Gartner, Inc., "IT has long asked vendors to provide mainframe-class functionality in a server. Features such as dynamic hardware partitioning (the mainframe-class ability to physically partition a system) improve scalability and availability to enable enterprise class capabilities necessary for mission critical applications such as OLTP databases."

Now with dynamic hardware partitioning, IT has the ability to deliver new levels of on-demand scalability as well as continuous availability for the most mission crucial workloads. For example, IT can consolidate multiple databases onto a single instance of SQL Server 2008 and scale up leveraging autonomic "hot add" capabilities as needed. In addition, the autonomic "hot replace" capability of dynamic hardware partitioning provides greater system availability for online hardware maintenance without loss of processing or memory resources.

"Our customers are excited about the vibrant ecosystem that has developed around Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008," said Bill Laing, general manager, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp. "This joint NEC-Microsoft solution helps to deliver the power of a mainframe to Windows Server 2008 customers by providing enterprise-class value for mission critical applications."

The dynamic hardware partitioning functionality available in Windows Server 2008 provides the ability to actively add memory, processor and I/O devices while the system is running for enhanced scalability with minimal operational outage, improving availability. In addition, the functionality also improves reliability, availability and serviceability by allowing hot replace on systems to avoid scheduled maintenance downtime.

Designed as NEC's next-generation mainframe architecture, processing and I/O modules of the NEC Express5800/1000 Series servers can be partitioned at the hardware level to create multiple physically-isolated servers. Through this architecture, the NEC Express5800/1000 servers have the unique capability of providing hardware-assisted memory state copy of a failing cell. This assisted "memory copy" capability accelerates the hot replace function of dynamic partitioning within Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

The NEC Express5800/1000 Series servers amplify the capability of the new Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor 9000 sequence. Leveraging NEC's supercomputing and mainframe technology, the NEC Express5800/1320Xf and Express5800/1080Rf servers are designed to meet the needs of the high-end server market.

NEC is a silver sponsor of 2008 Microsoft Launch Wave "HEROES happen {here}" on February 27, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, Calif., and on March 4, 2008 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, New York, N.Y. Dynamic partitioning hot replace capability for Windows Server 2008 was first demonstrated at WinHEC 2007. A video of the WinHEC 2007 dynamic partitioning demo, a pre-recorded webcast about the "Dynamic Always-On Enterprise Server Architecture for Microsoft Server 2008," and more information can be found at http://www.necam.com/Servers/Enterprise/.

About NEC Corporation of America

NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of network, IT and identity management solutions. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications to biometric security, virtualization and digital cinema solutions. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

To read the original release at NECAM.com, click here.

NEC Express5800/1320Xf Dual-Core Itanium Server Achieves Highest TPC-C Performance of Intel 16-Processor Architecture Server Platforms**

2008-02-20T00:00:00-07:00

NEC Validates Performance Leadership

Santa Clara, CA - Feb. 20, 2008 - NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, announced today that on January 21, 2008, the NEC Express5800/1320Xf server with 84 NEC D3-10 storage arrays reported the highest TPC-C* performance benchmark result among 16-processor Intel® server platforms that use Oracle® Database and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®. BEA® Tuxedo® 8.1 transaction processing monitor (TPM) was used to deliver the workload.

In this specific TPC-C benchmark, the NEC Express5800/1320Xf achieved 1,245,516 tpmC (transactions per minute) and a price per performance of $4.57/tpmC, demonstrating the power of an NEC solution running 16 Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 2 processors, Oracle® Database 10g Enterprise Edition on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux AS4 operating system.

"The latest TPC-C result proves that NEC's Dual-Core Itanium-based enterprise servers can meet increasing performance demands and application needs in large-scale database systems," said Mike Mitsch, general manager, Enterprise Server Division of NEC Corporation of America. "NEC is proud to offer exceptional performance and availability for online transaction processing through NEC's Exprses5800/1000 series servers and D-Series storage arrays."

Developed for over ten years and leveraging NEC's outstanding supercomputer and mainframe technology, NEC Express5800/1000 series servers meet mission critical business needs for the enterprise. The NEC Express5800/1320Xf is a third-generation NEC Express5800/1000 series Intel® Itanium® processors server product incorporating NEC's innovative A3 (A cubed) chipset. NEC's A3 chipset contributes to the server's outstanding reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS) and performance.

Further product information on NEC Express5800/1320Xf server and other Express5800/1000 series products can be found at http://www.necam.com/Servers/Enterprise/1000Series.cfm.

Performance Result
Throughput 1,245,516 tpmC
Price/Performance $4.57/tpmC
Availability Date Apr 30, 2008
System NEC Express5800/1320Xf Server
Processor Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9050 1.6GHz/24MB cache
Number of Processors 16
Number of Processor Cores 32
Number of Processor Threads 64
System Memory 1024GB
Data Storage 84 NEC D3-10 Storage Arrays
OS Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4
Database Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Enterprise Edition
Transaction Monitor BEA® Tuxedo® 8.1

About the TPC
The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) is a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry. The TPC was established in August 1988 by eight leading software and hardware companies. The TPC currently has 22 full members: AMD, BEA, Bull, Dell, EnterpriseDB, Exasol, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Hitachi, IBM, INGRES, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Netezza, Oracle, Par Accel, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, Teradata and Unisys.

Benchmark results and further information can be accessed via the TPC home page at www.tpc.org.

About NEC Corporation of America
NEC Corporation of America is a leading technology provider of network, IT and identity management solutions. Headquartered in Irving, TX, NEC Corporation of America is the North America subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation of America delivers technology and professional services ranging from server and storage solutions, IP voice and data solutions, optical network and microwave radio communications to biometric security, virtualization and digital cinema solutions. NEC Corporation of America serves carrier, SMB and large enterprise clients across multiple vertical industries. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

NOTE
Information and specifications are subject to change without notice.

* TPC-C is an OLTP (online transaction processing) benchmark developed by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). The TPC-C benchmark defines a rigorous standard for calculating performance and price/performance measured by transactions per minute (tpmC) and $/tpmC, respectively.
** Results referenced are as of January 21, 2008. Source http://www.tpc.org/.

NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. TPC Benchmark, TPC-C, tpmC and $/tpmC are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. Oracle is registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. BEA and BEA Tuxedo are registered trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark or a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the US and other countries. ©2008 NEC Corporation of America. All rights reserved.

Contacts:
Linda Goncalves
NEC Corporation of America
(408) 844-1325
linda.goncalves@necam.com

Syreeta Mussante
Sparkpr for NEC Corporation of America
(415) 321-1865
syreeta@sparkpr.com

To read the original release at NECAM.COM, click here.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Appoints Executive Director

2008-01-21T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium®-based systems enter 2008 with strong Alliance support and powerful market gains

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 21, 2008 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the appointment of Joan E. Jacobs as executive director to oversee global expansion of Alliance programs focused on driving industry growth and increased worldwide adoption of Itanium®-based systems. Jacobs joins the Alliance with more than 30 years experience in global marketing, alliance management, partner recruitment and new business development and plans to use this expertise to build on strong momentum achieved by Itanium-based systems in 2007.

In Q3 2007, Itanium-based system revenue again topped more than $1 billion, a feat achieved in three of the last four quarters. Worldwide, Itanium-based systems continue to gain share in both volume and revenue, with increases of 55 percent and 45 percent (YoY), respectively. Itanium-based system volume also amassed double-digit percentage gains in all regions .

Itanium-based system revenue reached its highest levels yet as a percentage of the RISC architecture. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, Itanium-based system revenue vs. Sun SPARC leapt more than 15 percent, from 57 to 73 percent and Itanium-based system revenue vs. IBM Power grew 5 percent from 54 to 59 percent .

"Customers are increasingly choosing Itanium-based solutions over the competition because Itanium-based platforms are ideal for mission-critical workloads, as evidenced by the impressive worldwide gains this past year. We will continue to take advantage of the competition's lack of progress and expand Itanium opportunities in 2008 through the addition of new Alliance members, expanded availability for solutions and the launch of innovative new programs," said Jacobs.

Jacobs' efforts continue the aggressive Alliance activities already underway. With a significant number of new applications for Itanium-based systems released in 2007, including applications from Red Hat, Symantec, ESI Group, Sophos and many others, Itanium-based system momentum is poised for strong growth in the coming year. Currently, more than 12,000 applications and tools are available on Itanium-based systems, representing a 200 percent increase year over year with a long list of new applications slated for release in 2008.

"We're excited to have Joan on board because she is a proven leader and understands exactly what it takes to address market challenges and harness Alliance resources to produce the best results possible," said Robin Drummond, president of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "Joan's global expertise is just what we need to capitalize on Itanium's significant growth and prepare for the advancements that Tukwila will bring to the marketplace later this year."

Tukwila is the code name for Intel's next level Itanium processor, which features four cores with hyper-threading technology, large on-die caches, as well as mainframe-level RAS and virtualization enhancements.

"We're on the right track in every area and combined with the strong support from Intel, our Founders, Charter Members and Itanium-based solutions providers, we are in a perfect position to make even more significant gains in market share and system revenue growth versus the competition," said Jacobs.

Jacobs' experience spans many years in the technology sector as an executive with Hewlett Packard (HP), Raytheon and Data General Corporation. She also represented HP on the Alliance's Steering Committee and chaired the organization's Enabling Committee. Most recently at HP, Jacobs led partner development for HP Integrity Servers, which included working with ISVs to port their applications to the product's Itanium-based platforms.

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SGI Sets Another Record in Oracle E-Business Suite Benchmark Tests

2007-11-12T00:00:00-07:00

Driven by New Dual-Core Intel Itanium Processor 9100 Series, SGI Altix 450 Server Smashes Oracle Benchmark Records
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oracle OpenWorld, (November 12, 2007)-At the world's largest gathering of Oracle software users, SGI (NASDAQ: SGIC) today announced its SGI® Altix® platform has again broken the performance and scalability record for real-world, multi-tier applications running Oracle® Database 10g Release 2.

In Oracle tests measuring the average response time of applications serving 3,000 concurrent online users, an SGI® Altix® 450 system outperformed the previous record holder by 70 percent 1. SGI remains the only platform provider to run "All Linux®" benchmark tests, reflecting the company's commitment to providing industrial-strength Linux solutions for high-performance enterprises.

The results were achieved on an SGI® Altix® 450 system powered by the latest Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 9100 series processors (code-named Montvale). Running the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (11.5.10) Benchmark, also known as the Oracle Applications Standard Benchmark (OASB), the SGI Altix 450 system achieved an average response time 0.453 seconds for 3,000 online users - 70 percent faster than the response time posted by the previous record holder.

The SGI system also delivered record hourly throughput in Oracle's measurement of order management and payroll batch business processes. With 3,000 users, Altix 450 processed 81,744 payroll checks in an hour, a result that beat the previous record by 10 percent.

In August, SGI first announced record test results based on 1,400, 1,800 and 2,000 users. Those results showed Altix 450 had outperformed the previous record holder by up to 100 percent. The latest tests measure Altix 450 performance based on a larger user load: 2,100, 2,700 and 3,000 concurrent users.

"Today's enterprises are experiencing remarkable surges in data volumes, even as their business processes are growing more complex," said Ken Won, director, enterprise data management, SGI, which is a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork. "These latest Oracle benchmark results show that SGI Altix consistently maintains high performance in even the most data-intensive Oracle Database 10g environment."

Reliably Scalable from 1,400 to 3,000 Users
The new results reinforce how SGI Altix 450 can reliably scale to accommodate more users and workloads with low impact on performance. As the benchmark load more than doubles from 1,400 to 3,000 concurrent users 2, the average response time of the Altix 450 slows by just 2.5 percent.

Altix 450 also reliably scales in Oracle payroll batch processing tests. As the benchmark load grew from 2,100 to 3,000 users, throughput on Altix 450 was reduced by only 2.4 percent.

"Businesses and organizations are under a lot of pressure to respond quickly to change and keep up with demanding, real-time data-intensive computing requirements," said Boyd Davis, general manager, Server Product Marketing, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel Corp. "SGI systems powered by the latest Dual-Core Intel Itanium processor 9100 series deliver amazing scalable performance, mainframe-class RAS and overall great value for today's mission-critical enterprise solutions."

The results were independently audited and verified on Oct. 18, 2007. For complete results and configurations, visit: http://www.oracle.com/apps_benchmark/html/results.html

The Oracle E-Business Suite 11i benchmark provides metrics for comparing Oracle application performance on different system configurations. It uses a mixed workload model to simulate the various business applications operating within an enterprise. The online transaction processing benchmark exercises the user interface flows most frequently used by Oracle customers. The batch throughput tests consist of a high-volume order processing program used to process and import orders in batch mode, and a payroll processing program used to process employee checks in batch mode.

The tested SGI configuration included:

* Database server tier: SGI Altix 450 system powered by 16 Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor 9100 series 1.6GHz with 24M L2 cache, single-threaded processors and featuring 128GB of memory
* Application server tier: Six SGI® Altix® XE240 servers, each powered by two Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processors and 16GB of memory and running Oracle Enterprise Linux
* Storage tier: SGI® InfiniteStorage 4500 system with a dual RAID controller and eight trays, each outfitted with 16x 146GB, 15K RPM drives

The results spotlight the high performance of SGI Altix 450 systems which, like SGI® Altix® 4700 servers and supercomputers, now are available with the new Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® processor 9100 series. With the latest Intel® Itanium® processors, SGI Altix servers achieve high performance from data-intensive applications, with efficient power consumption and high reliability. The new systems are available today.

To read the original release at SGI.com, click here.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Launches Mission-Critical Computing Resource Guide

2007-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

Website is Single Source for Solutions, Research and Peer Support for IT and Enterprise Business Professionals

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 1, 2007 – The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the launch of the Itanium® Solutions Guide (www.itaniumsolutions.com), an online resource providing IT professionals and enterprise business end users with data on how Itanium®-based computing can solve their business problems. The Solutions Guide’s goal is to foster business innovation by offering reliable and trusted information in an easy-to-use format. With more than 12,000 Itanium-based applications and numerous hardware vendor systems available in the market, the Itanium Solutions Guide efficiently categorizes and provides content so that busy IT and business professionals can quickly find, listen to, read and download the most relevant information to suit their needs.

The Itanium Solutions Guide is launching with an emphasis on Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). BI and ERP deployments rely on mission-critical databases, and are at the core of every thriving enterprise business. The Solutions Guide will show how Itanium-based solutions allow companies to consolidate key actionable data and quickly and accurately deploy resources. The Solutions Guide will also deliver numerous examples of how deployments of Itanium-based BI and ERP solutions have provided companies with the competitive advantage needed to succeed in the marketplace, while at the same time giving them a lower total cost of ownership and greater return on their investment than proprietary mid-range and mainframe solutions.

“The Itanium Solutions Guide is a natural evolution of our goal to offer concise and appropriate mission-critical computing information to the marketplace” said Robin Drummond, president of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. “Users can access relevant data and resources for their important computing needs and can contact Alliance members directly to get specific information about their Itanium-based solutions.”

In the Itanium Solutions Guide website, visitors experience information relevant to core business computing practices through traditional and new media such as: case studies, white papers, podcasts, videos, flash animations and blogs. The site also includes a Q&A section where Alliance members offer answers to user-submitted questions. The Alliance plans to expand the site on a quarterly basis by introducing new business solutions, vertical markets and topical issues.

The launch of the Solutions Guide continues the momentum generated by recent Alliance and Itanium milestones, including significant increases in Alliance membership, expansion of supporting applications and the growth of Itanium-based system sales worldwide.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

Itanium� Solutions Alliance and Remedy IT Collaborate on ACE+TAO Port for Software Solutions on Itanium�-based Systems

2007-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

CORBA® implementation promotes ISV ecosystem expansion, momentum continues for Itanium-based systems

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 1, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced collaboration with Alliance member Remedy IT to support continued development for the ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) and The ACE ORB (TAO) on Linux for Itanium®-based systems. ACE+TAO continue to expand the number of tool sets and development environments available for Itanium-based systems, thus increasing the number of software solutions available in the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) ecosystem.

On Itanium-based systems, ACE+TAO will implement standard patterns for communications software to make it easier for designers and programmers to communicate with each other. These patterns yield enhanced software with increased efficiency and predictability, and support for an easier transition to standard CORBA® (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) middleware. CORBA is a standard for communication between applications in a networked environment that allows software running on multiple computers to work together. The collaboration between the Itanium Solutions Alliance and Remedy IT will expand the availability for ACE+TAO on Linux for Itanium-based systems and will further promote migration of ACE+TAO users to Itanium-based systems.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance's commitment to work with Remedy IT on continued ACE+TAO development ensures its availability on a number of different systems and supports our continued software development on Itanium-based systems," said Johnny Willemsen, Technical Manager, Remedy IT.

Remedy IT is one example of how Alliance members contribute to the ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Remedy IT is a software company dedicated to the use of open-source products. The company supplies software solutions for many vertical industries, including banking, defense, manufacturing, and telecommunications. In addition to providing software solutions, Remedy IT conducts training courses to ensure application developers receive the maximum benefit from their software.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance is pleased to work with Remedy IT as it moves forward with its development of ACE+TAO support for Itanium-based systems," said Yoichi Murakami, Fujitsu Limited, Chairman of the Itanium Solutions Alliance Enabling Committee.

Since its inception in 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has grown in membership to more than 200 companies and application availability for Itanium-based systems has surpassed 12,000. Alliance membership is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium-based environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of enterprise-class computing solutions. More information about the Alliance and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2007 Itanium Solutions Alliance. Remedy IT is a registered trademark of Remedy IT and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. Intel and Itanium 2 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Other names and brands are properties of their respective owners.

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Virtualization Capabilities for Itanium�-based Systems Expand with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

Upcoming Release Offers Optimized Integrated Software Virtualization for Itanium

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, September 19, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance, in collaboration with Red Hat^TM today announced that in the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5.1 (RHEL), integrated software virtualization will be supported and optimized for Itanium® 2-based systems. This release broadens Itanium-based solutions in the marketplace.

The reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS) and security features of the Intel® Itanium processor allow users to confidently deploy industry-standard software virtualization, enhancing customers' ability to consolidate multiple applications on Itanium-based systems.

"Itanium Solutions Alliance founding sponsors worked with Red Hat to test, validate and optimize this fully integrated virtualization solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 provides customers with the maximum choice among enterprise systems when deploying open source applications on Itanium," said Scott Crenshaw, Vice President of Product Marketing at Red Hat. "Also, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform 5.1 provides additional high availability and storage virtualization technologies, and scales to support any number of processors and guest environments - making it the perfect solution for today's large, high-performance Itanium systems."

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance is pleased to have the opportunity to coordinate efforts with Red Hat to expand software solutions for Itanium-based systems and contribute to the growth of the Independent Software Vendor ecosystem," said Yoichi Murakami, Fujitsu Limited, Chairman of the Itanium Solutions Alliance Enabling Committee.

The collaboration with charter member Red Hat comes as the Itanium Solutions Alliance reaches its two year anniversary. Since its inception in 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has grown in membership to more than 200 companies and application availability for Itanium-based systems has surpassed 12,000.

Alliance membership is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium-based environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of leading computing solutions. More information about the Alliance and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform 5.1 for Itanium systems are scheduled for availability in Q4CY07. For further information please visit www.redhat.com.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2007 Itanium Solutions Alliance. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. Intel and Itanium 2 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Other names and brands are properties of their respective owners.
###

Itanium� Solutions Alliance Announces Second-annual Innovation Award

2007-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

Itanium Solutions Alliance to Award $50,000 Cash Prizes for Ultimate Solutions

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, September 18, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the launch of the second Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award. The annual program recognizes unique and innovative deployments of Itanium® 2-based solutions from all areas of computing and research. The judging panel for the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award is comprised of 11 industry experts and analysts.

End users and developers of Itanium-based applications can enter their solution in one of three areas to be considered for each category's $50,000 cash prize. Contest entries are due February 29, 2008 with category winners announced later in the spring. The award categories are:

• Humanitarian Impact: The Humanitarian Impact category awards the innovative use of applications running on Itanium-based systems where these systems demonstrate an impact on humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts. Examples include weather prediction, storm monitoring, tsunami model forecasting, and genetic and medical research.
• Enterprise Business Application: The Enterprise Business category awards the creative use of applications utilizing the benefits of the Intel® Itanium® architecture to produce either hard business results (such as cost savings and ROI) or soft business impact (including customer satisfaction and new product development).
• Entrepreneurial Innovation: This award is open to all entities excluding public companies with revenues exceeding US $25 million in the last reporting period. The award recognizes enhanced business operations using applications that take full advantage of the Intel Itanium architecture and rewards achievements in areas such as IT consolidation, increased ROI or customer satisfaction, and new product development.

Innovation Award judges include:
• Diane Bryant, vice president of Digital Enterprise Group and general manager of Server Platforms Group for Intel Corporation
• Jody Canavan, founder and president of Launch International
• Peter Chubb, research officer for the Gelato Federation at the University of New South Wales and senior research engineer of NICTA
• Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group
• Michael Fauscette, program vice president, applications at IDC
• Barb Goldworm, president and chief analyst at Focus Consulting
• Nirav Merchant, director of biotechnology computing at Arizona Research Laboratories
• Dan Reger, senior product manager for Microsoft Windows Server Marketing
• Clay Ryder, technology analyst, vice president & head of research at Sageza Group
• Larry Smarr, professor of technology at University of California San Diego and founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
• Mark K. Smith, managing director of the Gelato Federation

The panel will judge entries on a number of criteria such as degree of difficulty, results produced and originality. Last year's winners include Stony Brook University in the Humanitarian Impact category, Royal London Group in Enterprise Business and Secure64 in Entrepreneurial Innovation. For information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award and to download an application, visit www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org/innovation.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.
*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
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Itanium� Solutions Alliance Continues to Drive Growth

2007-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

Alliance membership doubles, ISV ecosystem reaches critical mass

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, September 18, 2007 – Today, the Itanium® Solutions Alliance announced strong momentum in several areas, which mirrored Itanium® 2-based solutions growth worldwide. Alliance membership doubled in one year with more than 200 participants now part of the effort to promote open, industry standard solutions based on Intel® Itanium® architecture. As the Alliance enters its third year of operation, Itanium-based solutions continue to show growth in areas such as application support, volume and market share.

Intel Itanium architecture has a robust ecosystem supporting more than 12,000 applications from thousands of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), reinforcing that it is a widely used platform. This growth will expand as the Alliance collaborates with its members on new solutions for end users. For example in 2008, the Alliance and Symantec® expect to broaden data centers’ ability to detect important security events on Itanium-based systems running both Windows® and Linux operating systems with Symantec Critical System Protection.

The number of Itanium-based systems sold has increased 40 percent worldwide with Western Europe leading the regions at 90 percent growth; Asia-Pacific Itanium-based systems volume grew 55 percent and the Americas, 24 percent.

“Itanium-based systems have made tremendous progress in the past two years, due in part to the efforts of the Itanium Solutions Alliance,” said Matt Eastwood, Group Vice President, Enterprise Platform Research for IDC. “Itanium-based solutions have strong momentum in key areas and this translates to increased sales and adoption rates, and more importantly, overall customer confidence.”

Itanium-based systems sales are growing faster than SPARC* and Power* systems. Worldwide, Itanium-based systems revenue is currently 58.6 and 57 percent of SPARC and Power systems revenue, respectively. This is more than a 30 percent increase compared to the same period in 2006. 2 Itaniumbased systems are currently deployed in more than 75 percent of Global 100 companies.

In 2007, several milestones contributed to overall Alliance progress including:
• The winners of the first Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award were announced in Beijing in April, recognizing their unique and innovative deployments of Itanium-based solutions from all areas of computing and research;
• In May, Intel and Sun* collaborated to deliver Java™ Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for Itanium-based systems;
• The Alliance joined the Mainframe Migration Alliance in July; and
• The Alliance welcomed its 200th member in August.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world of proprietary computing platforms to open, industry standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2007. Itanium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Intel and Itanium 2 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.
*All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
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Virtualization Capabilities for Itanium�-based Systems Expand with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

Upcoming Release Offers Optimized Integrated Software Virtualization for Itanium

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, September 19, 2007 – The Itanium® Solutions Alliance, in collaboration with Red Hat™ today announced that in the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5.1 (RHEL), integrated software virtualization will be supported and optimized for Itanium® 2-based systems. This release broadens Itanium-based solutions in the marketplace.

The reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS) and security features of the Intel® Itanium processor allow users to confidently deploy industry-standard software virtualization, enhancing customers’ ability to consolidate multiple applications on Itanium-based systems.

“Itanium Solutions Alliance founding sponsors worked with Red Hat to test, validate and optimize this fully integrated virtualization solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 provides customers with the maximum choice among enterprise systems when deploying open source applications on Itanium,” said Scott Crenshaw, Vice President of Product Marketing at Red Hat. “Also, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform 5.1 provides additional high availability and storage virtualization technologies, and scales to support any number of processors and guest environments – making it the perfect solution for today's large, high-performance Itanium systems.”

“The Itanium Solutions Alliance is pleased to have the opportunity to coordinate efforts with Red Hat to expand software solutions for Itanium-based systems and contribute to the growth of the Independent Software Vendor ecosystem,” said Yoichi Murakami, Fujitsu Limited, Chairman of the Itanium Solutions Alliance Enabling Committee.

The collaboration with charter member Red Hat comes as the Itanium Solutions Alliance reaches its two year anniversary. Since its inception in 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has grown in membership to more than 200 companies and application availability for Itanium-based systems has surpassed 12,000.

Alliance membership is open to any enterprise and technical software supplier looking to optimize applications for Itanium-based environments or enterprise and technical computing providers looking to network with other leaders in delivery of leading computing solutions. More information about the Alliance and membership can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform 5.1 for Itanium systems are scheduled for availability in Q4CY07. For further information please visit www.redhat.com.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical solutions providers to work together towards a common objective of transitioning the world to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. More information about the Itanium Solutions Alliance, membership, industry resources and developer programs can be found at www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

© 2007 Itanium Solutions Alliance. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. Intel and Itanium 2 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Other names and brands are properties of their respective owners.
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Itanium� Solutions Alliance Joins Mainframe Migration Alliance

2007-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

Alliance Strengthens Mainframe Migration Message with Membership

PORTLAND, Ore., July 23, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced its membership in the Mainframe Migration Alliance (MMA), a group of companies working together to help customers modernize their mission-critical applications from the mainframe onto the Microsoft® platform.

Microsoft, a Charter Member of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, is the key driving force behind the MMA. Members of the MMA find the Alliance provides value through visibility in the market and networking with peers. The marketplace also benefits from better solutions due to the advocacy of MMA and its members.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance's tagline "Delivering a new era in mission-critical computing," reflects perfectly the theme of the MMA - offering mainframe customers solutions for modernizing their legacy systems by moving to Windows while preserving the traditional reliability and scalability they have come to depend on. We are really excited about the Itanium Solutions Alliance joining the MMA." said Spyros Sakellariadis, director at Microsoft Corporation and sponsor of the MMA.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance participation in the MMA provides a great opportunity for two like-minded organizations to provide a wealth of knowledge for IT departments facing modernization of their IBM-based mainframe systems," said Robin Drummond, president of the Itanium Solutions Alliance.

Since its inception in 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has educated IT decision makers and independent software vendors (ISVs) of the benefits of Itanium-based computing. Microsoft joined the Itanium Solutions Alliance as a Charter Member in 2005, and has collaborated on numerous projects through the years. Currently there are over 12,000 applications with 3,000 Windows applications and a number of Windows-based tools available on Itanium 2-based systems.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance
The Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed by leading enterprise and technical computing solutions providers to work together toward a common objective of transitioning the world to open, industry-standard solutions based on Intel Itanium architecture. Together with leading enterprise software and hardware providers, the Alliance is dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Its membership comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry. For more information, visit www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org.

About the Mainframe Migration Alliance
Formed in spring 2003, the Mainframe Migration Alliance is comprised of software vendors and service providers focused on enabling mainframe customers to meet the challenges posed by legacy application environments, including the pressures to reduce IT costs and increase the flexibility in IT systems. Additional information about the alliance can be found at: www.mainframemigration.org.
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Java Standard Edition to be Supported for Itanium� 2-based Systems

2007-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

Development Environment and Application Availability Broadens for Intel® Itanium® 2 Architecture

Portland, Ore., May 16, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance commends Sun Microsystems and Intel Corporation, a Founding Sponsor of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, on their cooperation to deliver Sun's Java^TM Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for Itanium® 2-based solutions. Intel is porting and optimizing the code, and support is expected to be included as part of a standard update for Java SE 6 available from Sun next year.

The availability of this support will ensure the "write once, run anywhere" philosophy, which helped make the Java Platform a widely-used development environment, continues to extend to developers working on Itanium-based systems. This support for Intel Itanium architecture is expected to increase the availability of Java-based software and broaden solutions choices for end users.

The announcement came during an Intel keynote at JavaOneSM in San Francisco, Calif. by Renee J. James, vice president and general manager of the Software and Solutions Group, where she was joined onstage by Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems. Sun said it will host the port for Intel Itanium architecture on a Sun website, making it a one-stop shop for developers.

"The Itanium Solutions Alliance has made steady progress with increasing application availability on Itanium-based platforms; Java support for Itanium expands that portfolio further," said Gordon Haff, Principal IT Advisor with Illuminata, Inc. "This Java support also provides significant incremental development opportunities on Itanium-based platforms."

Itanium-based solutions have shown strong market opportunity and solution support in recent years, spurred by a $10 billion joint investment announced by the Itanium Solutions Alliance Founding Sponsors in January 2006 and the release of the Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor 9000 series in July 2006. Today, there are more than 12,000 Itanium-based applications available from over 2,000 vendors and Itanium-based systems are currently deployed in more than three quarters of the Global 100 Corporations.

About The Itanium Solutions Alliance

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Itanium� Solutions Alliance Innovation Contest Winners Announced

2007-04-17T00:00:00-07:00

Global Recipients Represent Innovative Achievements in Mission-critical Computing

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, BEIJING, April 17, 2007 - The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the winners of the Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Contest. The contest recognized top deployments of Itanium® 2-based systems in mission-critical computing environments. One winner in each of three categories will receive a $50,000 US cash prize or charitable donation. Category winners are Dr. Carlos Simmerling and team at Stony Brook University for Humanitarian Impact Innovation; Royal London Group for Enterprise Business Application; and Secure64 Software Corporation in the Entrepreneurial Innovation category.

"Efficiency, scalability and built-in reliability make the Itanium 2 processor a highly compelling platform for innovative computing - especially for heavy load applications," said Gale Persil, director of product management operations at CA and Innovation Contest judge. "The Innovation Contest winners demonstrate how these attributes are being used to address a wide range of real-world challenges and achieve tangible, highly impressive results."

Humanitarian Impact Innovation category winner Dr. Carlos Simmerling at Stony Brook University is fulfilling a humanitarian need through ground-breaking biomedical research. Dr. Simmerling and his team of researchers utilized the inherent data processing capabilities of Itanium-based computing to enable advanced HIV and AIDS research. The Itanium-based solution allows researchers to create computer simulations that provide a view of HIV's dynamic behavior with unprecedented resolution in both time and space, providing an innovative tool for development of new AIDS treatments. Dr. Simmerling is also using simulations to enable vital research in the treatment of tuberculosis and cancer.

Enterprise Business Application winner Royal London Group developed a solution utilizing Itanium 2-based systems in the migration of 750 million data records and 10 million lines of application code for their Scottish Life Assurance division. Scottish Life Assurance saw significant gains in performance since online response times were no longer affected by unscheduled downtime caused by hardware issues. Operating costs were significantly lower and over the next five years the total cost of ownership is expected to be half of those excepted for the previous system.

The Entrepreneurial Innovation award recognizes enhanced business operations of companies with revenues under $25 million. Category winner Secure64 Software Corporation showcased their development of the SourceT micro operating system, an OS that takes advantage of the strong, built-in security and performance features of the Intel Itanium 2 architecture. Designing and developing a system that is invulnerable to attackers requires solving several critical problems unaddressed by current hardware and software architectures. Secure64 demonstrated its Genuinely Secure, high performance computing environment that came from the combination of their solution and the Intel® Itanium® 2 architecture.

In addition to category winners, ten organizations from around the globe received honorable mentions for their Alliance Innovation Contest submissions. Honorable mention recipients from the Americas are: Gencom, Kindred Healthcare, PSI, Stanford University, the University of California - Riverside, and the University of Houston. Asia-Pacific honorable mentions are: Infosys and Southwest University. European honorable mention recipients are: Amadeus Data Processing and the University of Karlsruhe - Weather Computing Center.

For more information about the Alliance Innovation Contest or the winning organizations, visit http://www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org/innovation/.