Don't reinvent the wheel -- applying SOA Governance to all types of apps</h1> <article> <h1>Don't reinvent the wheel -- applying SOA Governance to all types of apps</h1> <p>kellyemo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:54:00 GMT</p> <p>Calling all intrepid SOA pioneers... It's time to bask in the glow of the wisdom we've gained from cutting our teeth on SOA and share what we've learned more broadly to organizations looking at building out modern applications. </p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/soa/w_5F00_crossingshalloww.jpg"></a></p> <p>SOA brought us some major challenges -- many more moving parts to manage, dependencies built into the architectural fabric, the task of changing traditional silo'd organizations into flexible teams willing to share...but it also brought us architectural agility, interoperability, and better business-IT alignment. And, it also brought us the realization that governance is not a bad thing but can provide the flexible guidance system to help IT navigate the people, process and technology changes required by a new architectural approach.</p> <p>We've been tracking the benefits of different aspects of governance as applied to SOA by way of reaching out and working with our key customers and partners and what we have been seeing is that not only are our customers having success with SOA governance but also with applying fundamental best practices and approaches of governance more broadly, across their application environments.</p> <p>As we work with these customers and internally, we are seeing, more and more, the direct benefit of applying automated governance more broadly across the lifecycle of applications and we've started to document these findings in a new white paper, called "Application Governance in Action". You can download this white paper off of <a href="https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpdc/display/main/secure/download_pdf_protected.jsp?zn=bto&cp=54_4000_100">HP's website here</a>.</p> <p>In this white paper, you'll read about how governance can help align Application teams and operations teams to reduce the time, effort and number of errors that occur from the transition between testing/staging and application deployment. You can also read about how application governance can help keep distributed development teams coding and implementing based on desired architectural patterns and using underlying infrastructure that is in compliance with technical and support needs. The main goal of this white paper is to get you thinking. If SOA govenrance is proven to reduce the time, effort and accelerate adoption of SOA projects, what can it do for your complete modern application landscape? </p> <p>Let's discuss this topic.. what do you think about the role of governance in the larger application lifecycle?</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>XP Disk Array and HP's relationship with Hitachi, LTD of Japan</h1> <p>CalvinZ — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:43:00 GMT</p> <p>By James R. Wilson, XP Disk Array Product Manager</p> <p>Recently Chris Mellor, a widely read columnist and blogger, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/could_hp_buy_3par/">wrote an article speculating on the possible next step of HP with respect to the HP StorageWorks XP Disk Array</a>, HP's enterprise storage offering, and the possibility of HP acquiring another product in this market space. With respect to that article on XP and Hitachi, let me make a couple of important distinctions. HP has no business or technical relationship with HDS. By contrast, HP has both an Engineering partnership and an OEM sales relationship with Hitachi, LTD of Japan . </p> <p>This distinction is significant to a key premise of Chris Mellors' article that HP prefers to have control over the technology it ships. HP participates very actively in the design and core technology of the XP product family. We do not control the technology per se, but we have a very active involvement in the design and creation of the products through our engineering partnership. This engineering relationship has existed from the begining of the XP product introduction by HP, and was in fact a key component of our decision to form a relationship with Hitachi. The engineering relationship is directly with Hitachi Japan, the creators and owners of the technology, not through HDS. Sun, by contrast, is simply a reseller of the HDS technology and has no such input or connection with Hitachi Japan.</p> <p>(Editor's note: You can follow HP StorageWorks on Twitter by <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/HPstorageGuy">clicking here</a>)</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Central Nervous System for the Earth</h1> <p>Charlie Bess — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:45:00 GMT</p> <p>The New York Times had an article on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/11/18/18readwriteweb-a-central-nervous-system-for-earth-hps-ambi-15544.html">HP labs activities to gather information on a massive scale</a>. It's a research and development program to show an example of building a planet-wide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors." This kind of sensor network is one of the enablers of the <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2009/02/09/age-of-data-abundance-and-the-cloud.aspx">age of abundance of data</a>, I've mentioned before. <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2006/02/16/further-thoughts-on-the-economy-of-abundance-and-nano-technology.aspx">Sensing is one of the low hanging fruit of nano-technology</a> so we'll see more of it in the future. Of course, the use of <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2008/03/18/opportunistic-computing-in-the-cloud.aspx">cloud computing to maximize the value from that data</a> is key as well.</p> <p><a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2009/oct-dec/cense.html">Here is an article from the labs</a> that includes an interview with Stan Williams on the activity.</p> <p>Companies will use similar techniques in the future to develop a deeper understanding of what is going on within and around their business. A good example of where this is going on today is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid">smart grid</a> within the energy industry. It allows for a more finely grained understanding and proactive use of information by the supply and demand chain to improve efficiency as control consumption.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Color Management in Windows Vista vs. Mac OS X</h1> <p>Eileen Fritsch — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:01:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"><a href="http://www.colorcritical.com">By Marc Aguilera</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/graphicarts/AguileraM.jpg"><span style="color:#ffffff;"></span></a><span style="color:#ffffff;">I am a cross-platform kind of guy. I have my wonderful black MacBook as well a Dell desktop running Windows Vista Professional. When I teach a class on color-management or other aspects of photography, I always like to know which platform each photographer is using. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">In most cases, the photographer’s operating system of choice has to do with experiential history—whichever platform the photographer first started using is what they have continued to use. Sometimes I hear about photographers who have switched from OS X to Windows and vice versa. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">One reason I use both operating systems is because I frequently get questions about how Windows integrates color-management differently than Mac OS X. Different versions of Windows handle color management differently, So let’s focus first on Windows Vista. <br /><br /></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Storing Profiles in Windows Vista</span></b></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">: In Vista, the ICC profiles for your displays, scanners, cameras, and printer/media combinations are stored in the Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color directory. If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to make a shortcut on your desktop to the contents of the directory. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">One of my favorite color-management features of Windows is that if you acquire a profile from an outside source (either by downloading one from a website or having one sent to you via e-mail), you can easily copy the profile into the proper directory. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Simply right-click on the profile and select <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;">Install Profile. </b>This simple process will copy the profile into the Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color directory where it will be available for ICC-aware applications such as Photoshop and Lightroom.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Mac OS X does not have this feature. If you are wondering where profiles reside in OS X they are located in you Library/ColorSync/Profiles directory for either the root or user level. <br /><br /></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Display Calibration:</span></b><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"> When you calibrate and profile your display for color-accurate editing, you should know that one of the trickier things about Windows is that the video card driver must support a software rewrite of the default gamma tables in the video card LUT (Look Up Table). </span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">X-Rite has a tool to test this. <span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=758&Action=support&SoftwareID=546">Click here to check it out</a></span>. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">If your video card does not support modifiable video LUT's then you may have to upgrade or downgrade your video card driver, or even possibly purchase a new video card. This is common on many older laptop PCs.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Mac OS X works on a totally different premise and ColorSync can use a table in the display profile to load the calibration data to the video card. <br /><br /></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Windows Color Systems</span></b></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">: One of the biggest changes in Microsoft color management was the introduction of WCS or Windows Color System for Vista. This was introduced during the development of Vista. This initiative was a collaboration with Canon, and uses Kyuanos technology developed by Canon. WCS is very powerful and has a host of totally new features designed to evolve color in the OS. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">We’ll talk about some of these improvements in more detail in a separate post, but some of the benefits of the Windows Color System include a completely revamped color infrastructure and translation engine called CITE, an enhanced color-processing pipeline that supports greater bit depths and multiple color channels, and support for scRGB (a wide gamut RGB space developed by Microsoft and HP). Most notably, Windows Color System provides an improved user experience through a centralized color control panel. <br /><br /></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Where Vista Still Lags Behind Mac OS X</span></b><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">: The biggest issue with color management in Windows Vista is the lack of integration of the display profile into every application. </span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">One of the beauties of Mac OS X is that every application uses the display profile to render color. This means that if an image has an embedded profile, OS X will convert the color data and give you the correct appearance on your screen. Your images will look the same whether you are viewing them in Photoshop, Preview, Safari, and Mail. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">This is not true for Windows Vista. In Vista, applications need to be ICC aware to accurately display color images that have been created and saved in color spaces other than sRGB. <br /><br /></span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">This means that images that you have edited and stored in the Adobe RGB or ProPhoto color spaces will look different in Internet Explorer, Outlook, or Microsoft Picture Viewer<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>than when you edited them in Photoshop or Lightroom. </span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></span></p> <p><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;"><span style="color:#ffffff;">For more information on photography and color at Microsoft visit </span><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto"><span style="color:#ffffff;">www.microsoft.com/prophoto</span></a><span style="color:#ffffff;"> and </span><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/color/WCS.mspx"><span style="color:#ffffff;">www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/color/WCS.mspx</span></a></span></p> <p><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Helvetica','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;mso-hansi-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;">Marc Aguilera is a part-time professional photographer and Photography and Digital Workflow instructor for University of California San Diego Extension. He is also an Apple Certified Professional in Color Management and Apple Certified Pro Trainer. He is a color expert for X-Rite's Color Services division and speaks on behalf of the creative community at AIGA's HOW Conference and at the PIA/GATF Color Conference each year. He has a BA degree in Visual Arts from Univeristy of California-San Diego. </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Helvetica','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;mso-hansi-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;">You can reach him through his blog at <a href="http://www.colorcritical.com/">http://www.colorcritical.com</a>. </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="line-height:115%;font-size:10pt;"></span></i></span></p> <p><span style="color:#ffffff;"> </span></p> </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;"></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Case Study on Responsible Business Competition</h1> <p>ulrikehaug — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:45:00 GMT</p> <p>Allow me to draw your attention to our latest <a target="_blank" href="http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA2-3076EEE.pdf">Case Study</a> about the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.responsible-business.org">Responsible Business Competition</a>, which we every year with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ja-ye.org">Junior Achievement Young Enterprise Europe</a>. </p> <p>The latest addition to the competition is a new application on Facebook, the ‘<a target="_self" href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.facebook.com%2Fresponsiblebusiness%2F&h=42938628c3d4c3aa19d588611f33d1e9">Responsible Business Challenge’</a>, which invites students up to the age of 25 to submit their ideas on what a responsible business could look like in the year 2020. You can vote for and comment on the ideas that have been submitted, even if you’re older than 25. Log on now and check out the application!</p> <p>Ulrike Haug</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Heterogeneous Virtualization (HP + VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, and Red Hat)</h1> <p>pspielvogel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:23:00 GMT</p> <p>One advantage of HP’s virtualization management approach is that we work closely with all the major virtualization vendors. Earlier this week, we hosted a partner virtualization event in San Francisco along with our key virtualization partners including Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware. The audience included both business and technical press. </p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/managementsoftware/ramin_5F00_virt_5F00_event.jpg"></a></p> <p>Here are two articles written about the event.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/hewlett-packard-microsoft-technology-cio-network-finance.html?partner=yahootix" title="article">The Convergence Of IT And Business</a></strong> <br />Forbes, by Taylor Buley<br />November 19, 2009</p> <p><a href="http://www.internetnews.com/hardware/article.php/12217_3849151_2%20" title="article"><strong>Is Cloud Computing Ready to Rumble?</strong></a><br />internetnews.com by David Needle<br />November 19, 2009</p> <p>For <a href="http://www.hp.com/go/opc" title="HP Operations Center">HP Operations Center</a>, Jon Haworth and Peter Spielvogel.</p> <p>Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps <a href="http://twitter.com/HPITOps">http://twitter.com/HPITOps</a></p> <p>Join the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=62552&trk=anetsrch_name&goback=.gdr_1244654582519_1" title="LinkedIn group">HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn</a>. </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Sneak Preview: HP Software Universe - Hamburg</h1> <p>amyfeldman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:16:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><a href="http://h41112.www4.hp.com/events/su2009/content_holder.php?content=agenda_btot&kmfsession=c82132da7d02b492ca757af36a21c25c" title="HP Software Universe"><span style="font-size:small;">Software Universe</span></a><span style="font-size:small;"> is only a few weeks away. We hold this event twice each year, alternating between a United States and European location. The upcoming event is in Hamburg at the Congress Centre Hamburg (CCH) from Wednesday, December 16th – Friday, December 18th 2009. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;">(If you missed our last </span><a href="http://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2009.com/hpswu/controller.cfm?view=content.overview"><span style="font-size:small;">Software Universe in Las Vegas, you can download some of the presentations here</span></a><span style="font-size:small;">.)</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;">We are very excited about this year’s show. There are many interesting presentations which we have put together based on information we have received after talking to many of our customers. Some highlights* (based on their relevancy to managing applications/ services - both physical and virtual) include:</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/mbsmreality/Hamburg.bmp"></a></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><b><span style="font-size:13pt;font-family:Arial;">Wednesday, 16.12.2009</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">16:00-16:45 hall B22:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span><b>How to design, build and sell HP Business Availability Center (BAC) to end customers </b><a href="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=RolfVassdokken" title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=RolfVassdokken">Rolf Vassdokken, Ergo Group</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">16:00 - 16:45 room 15: <b>Enrich Service Quality Management with end-user Quality of Experience - </b><a href="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=SachaRaybaud" title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=SachaRaybaud">Sacha Raybaud, Hewlett-Packard</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">17:00 - 17:45 hall G2: <b>Application Lifecycle Management FastTour: Redefining the Lifecycle -</b><a href="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=BradHipps" title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=BradHipps">Brad Hipps, Hewlett-Packard</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">17:00-17:45 hall 6:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span><b>Bankwest: deploying HP Business Availability Center solutions to monitor business services to help maximise service uptime and drive out cost - </b>Richard Rees, Chief Manager, Platform Integrity; Richard Walker, Hewlett-Packard</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">18:00-18:45 hall G1: <b>Quickly identify and resolve 4 common application issues using HP's Application Management Solution - </b><a href="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=AmyFeldman" title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/speaker.php?PHPSESSID=0f108d0bed036cba18c013268bcaa6c4&name=AmyFeldman">Amy Feldman, Hewlett-Packard</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:black;font-family:Arial;">18:00 - 18:45 <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>room 13: <b>Rabobank - An IT Operation's transformation. Maturing from silo management to a Unified Operations solution, underpinning a best practice approach for better business outcomes - </b>Toine Jenniskens, Rabobank</span></p> <p><span> <h2 class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"></span></h2> <h2 class="MsoNormal"> T</h2> hursday, 17.12.2009</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">09:00-09:45 hall D: <strong>Isolation and Business Transaction Management: How new technologies in BAC help you better manage applications</strong> - Michael Procopio, Hewlett-Packard; Chris Tracey, Hewlett-Packard</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">10:00 - 10:45 hall F: <strong>Reducing costs and accelerating your BSM solution through HP SaaS - HMRC's experiences with on-site deployment and SaaS</strong>. -Spencer Holland, HMRC / CapGemini</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">10:00 - 10:45 hall D: <strong>The all new Operations Center (& BAC) licensing model: escaping the hardware bonds - </strong>Jon Haworth, Hewlett-Packard; Peter Crosby, Hewlett-Packard</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">15:15 - 16:00 <strong>BTO Impact of Virtualization on IT Management -</strong>Dennis Corning, Hewlett-Packard</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">15:15 - 16:00 hall C21: <a href="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/agenda_sessions_tmp.php?agenda_type=BTOT&id=9363" title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/agenda_sessions_tmp.php?agenda_type=BTOT&id=9363"><span title="http://hp-softu.stage.kmf-port.de/su09/agenda_sessions_tmp.php?agenda_type=BTOT&id=9363"><strong>The Impact of Virtualization on IT Management</strong></span></a> - Mike Shaw, Hewlett-Packard</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">16:30 - 17:15 hall 6: <strong>Impact of HP Business Service Management solution on service provider business and end-user value (panel) -</strong>Rolf Vassdokken, Stefan Danisovsky and Vincenzo Asaro Telecom Italia</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-size:13pt;font-family:Arial;">Friday, 18.12.2009</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:13pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span></b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">09:00 - 11:00 room 17: <b>BSM - Advanced Workshop - </b>Gundula Swidersky, Hewlett-Packard</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">* dates, times, and speakers subject to change</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">Hope to see you there. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;">Sanjay Anne, Amy Feldman & Aruna Ravichandran</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Closing the Loop, Optimizing the Supply Chain</h1> <p>christianverstraete — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:50:00 GMT</p> I'd like to start a series of blog entries titled "Close the Loop" and addressing how, through a better use of supply chain information, companies can improve their operations, creating a more agile ecosystem while reducing risk. In this entry, I would like to give you an overview of the different elements required to close the loop and I will spend the following entries to go more in details in each of the components. Yesterday I was at a conference titled "Achieving Excellence...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/manufacturing-distribution/archive/2009/11/20/closing-the-loop-optimizing-the-supply-chain.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>ENISA Cloud Computing Risk Assessment Report</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:35:00 GMT</p> <p><a href="http://www.enisa.europa.eu/">ENISA</a> has recently released three documents related to Cloud Computing, all of them available online:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/rm/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-risk-assessment/">Cloud Computing Risk Assessment</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/rm/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-information-assurance-framework/">Cloud Computing Information Assurance</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/rm/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-sme-survey">Cloud Computing SME Perspective Survey</a> </li> </ul> <p>Enjoy. </p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site ---</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>On the T-Mobile Incident and Open Questions on Trading Personal Data Online</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:22:00 GMT</p> <p>There has been an incident this week where <a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20091118/ttc-t-mobile-employees-sold-data-from-th-6315470.html">employees of T-Mobile have been caught selling customer data. </a></p> <p>On one hand this has shown that there is a thriving market for this kind of data ... </p> <p>On the other hand, this has also highlighted "interesting issues as under the Data protection Act, it is a criminal offence knowingly or recklessly to obtain or disclose personal data (or to get someone else to do it for you) without the consent of the organisation responsible for that data. ...", as discussed in this <a href="http://www.scmagazineuk.com/the-t-mobile-incident-opens-new-unanswered-questions-about-trading-personal-data-online/article/158191/">article</a>.</p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site --- </p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Whitepaper – Avoid the 7 Most Common Mistakes of Compliance</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:19:00 GMT</p> <p>Here is a recent whitepaper that might be of interest to the IAM and security community, "<a href="http://go.techtarget.com/r/10007855/3287759/1">Avoiding the 7 Most Common Mistakes of Compliance</a>" (registration is required to get a copy ...):</p> <p>"At the most basic level, there is no single standardized framework or terminology that explicitly defines what your organization must do for compliance. Instead, there are many frameworks with conflicting requirements. Terminology is often vague or interpreted differently within organizations and between geographic regions. Ambiguity abounds due to lack of a universal philosophy of compliance. </p> <p>A big challenge for security professionals is navigating this ambiguity. Check out this white paper for an in-depth review of the seven most common mistakes of security compliance and tips on using these lessons to meet your compliance goals." </p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site ---</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>White paper: From Green IT to Greening with IT</h1> <p>jeanne2007 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:02:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">A few months ago, WWF published a HP-supported white paper called ‘From Green IT to Greening with IT’. The paper is directed mainly at policy makers and aims to explore the role of IT in business and government strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It particularly looks at how the current economic and financial crisis can be turned into an opportunity to promote the uptake of low carbon IT solutions. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The paper illustrates nicely the difference between the meaning of Green IT and Greening IT, which is, I think, really important to stress. Green IT refers to making IT more efficient to reduce GHG emissions from the IT sector, which account for 2% of global GHG emissions. Greening with IT, on the other hand, means providing low carbon IT solutions that reduce GHG emissions across different sectors. Examples would be virtual meetings that replace the need to travel as often, thereby reducing the levels of GHG emissions that are generated from the travel sector. Such Greening with IT solutions can be integrated in all businesses and can consequently have an enormous effect on reducing emissions, as they address the remaining other 98%. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We summarised the main points of the paper in an article. <a target="_blank" href="http://h41111.www4.hp.com/globalcitizenship/uk/en/bulletin/31/news1.html">Please have a look at the article</a> and the <a target="_blank" href="http://pamlin.net/blog/WWF%20Greening%20with%20IT_web.pdf">paper</a>. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This paper is the last in a series of several reports that HP EMEA supported for WWF. You can find links to the reports at the bottom of the article. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">For insights into IT as an enabler of a low carbon economy, I can also recommend reading blogs by Dennis Pamlin, the author of the reports. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Jeannette Weisschuh</span></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Green, Computer Aided Persuasion and the Interface at the Edge</h1> <p>Charlie Bess — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:15:00 GMT</p> <p>An article in <em>New Scientist</em> explores how <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18121-innovation-can-technology-persuade-us-to-save-energy.html">user interface researchers are investigating computer aided persuasion as a technique to assist people to make choices.</a> To me this is a perfect example of understanding how to use the <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2007/09/19/edge-computing-moving-through-everywhere-to-close-to-nowhere.aspx">edge computing interface</a> to shift behavior.</p> <p>"Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands are using <a href="http://www.hitech-projects.com/icat/">iCat</a>, a <a target="ns" href="http://www.research.philips.com/technologies/projects/robotics.html">robotic cat made by Philips</a>, to advise on energy use. It talks and can move its lips, eyelashes and eyebrows.</p> <p>One experiment showed that when programming a washing machine, people were more inclined to follow energy consumption advice about different cycles when it came from iCat rather than graphs and numbers. That suggests the savings which simple awareness can provoke can be magnified by using more 'social' mechanisms to deliver advice."</p> <p>It's been shown before that if you can give the consumer more information about their consumption and its effect on their spending that they'll act upon it and <a href="http://smartgridwatch.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/perhaps-surprisingly-residential-consumers-can-reduce-the-most-peak-demand/">consumer consumption of electricity has a significant effect on the fluctuation in demand</a>.</p> <p>I've posted before about <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2008/10/23/interface-shifts-at-the-edge.aspx">Edge computing and the possibilities of edge interfaces</a>. One of the best examples in the marketplace of someone redefining the edge of a product is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkinz">Webkinz</a>. This company took a tens of thousands of year old "commodity" product - a stuffed animal and shifted the edge interface. Children can have their doll on the computer as well as in their hands. They can have their friends Webkinz come over to their <a href="http://www.webkinz.com/SWF/TOUR/siteTour.html">virtualized world</a> and play with their webkinz. Needless to say, the shift in edge experience worked. Kids usually don't just buy one of these toys. So for companies understanding the edge interface for the consumer and redefining it can be rewarding.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Moore's Law - the Failing Crutch</h1> <p>MKSmith101 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:22:00 GMT</p> <p>For a half century, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law">Moore's Law</a> has simplified the CIO's life. Were you pushing the limits of your batch cycle window because of insufficient computing cycles? Upgrade your hardware and everything will run faster. (I know there are plenty of other issues that may affect performance, but let's keep things simple.) As long as computing loads grew in concert with processer speed everything worked great.</p> <p>Moore's Law still seems to be hanging in there and the latest predications claim it will hold true at least through 2015. As we all know, predicting the end of this cycle has had a very poor track record. </p> <p>But something has changed. Processor clock-rates are not increasing. Instead, the number of core's on a chip is going up. So while chips continue to increase their effective workload, your single-threaded application is not running a lot faster. Compilers can take some advantage of more cores, but without a significant change from a simple architecture, doubling the number of transistors may only provide a 20-40% speedup. </p> <p>If workloads are doubling every two years, single-threaded applications are falling behind. This is yet another reason to <a href="http://h10134.www1.hp.com/services/appsmodernization/">evaluate your portfolio</a> in a comprehensive fashion. </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The Cloud and your Applications: What is the Impact on Application Management? (Free Webinar)</h1> <p>amyfeldman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:53:00 GMT</p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009"><strong>The Cloud and your Applications: What is the Impact on Application Management? (Free webinar)</strong></span></p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009">Are your applications doing what they are suppose to be doing? Can you confidently answer the question, are you cloud assure when it comes to your critical business applications? Cloud computing, tiered applications, Software as a Service (SaaS) – all add complexity and make that question more difficult to answer. <br /><br />Customers are finding more business service problems. The result: customer satisfaction and retention is at risk. The good news is that despite declining budgets, you can reduce downtime, increase service levels, and improve user experience quality. </span></p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009">Hear <a href="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/" title="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" title="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/">EMA</span></a> Research Director <a href="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/about/team/Julie_Craig.php" title="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/about/team/Julie_Craig.php"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" title="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/about/team/Julie_Craig.php">Julie Craig</span></a> share the early results of a recent market research survey. You’ll also hear from HP Product Marketing Manager Amy Feldman, who will share customer best practices and success stories. </span></p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009">Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009</span></p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009">Time: 6am PST/9am EST/2pm UK</span></p> <p><span class="643293017-19112009">Learn how you can become more cloud confident by r</span><span class="643293017-19112009">egistering for this free webinar at </span><a href="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=1593" title="http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=1593">http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=1593</a></p> <p>Thanks</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color:#888888;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';">Amy Feldman</span></strong><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';"></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color:#888888;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';">Product Marketing - HP Business Availability Cente<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';">HP Software and Solutions </span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';mso-fareast-font-family:'Times New Roman';"></span></span></span></span></p> <p><span style="background-color:#888888;"><span style="color:#000000;"> </span></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>OpenVMS 8.4 enters Field Test</h1> <p>jacob.van-ewyk@hp.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:27:00 GMT</p> <p>Well, I'm catching up on my e-mail after spending a few days on the road. It seems that the last few days have been quite busy around here! I know that some readers of this blog run or work with OpenVMS, and I'm reminded that we often don't promote it enough. So, when there is an announcement, I guess I better get it out quickly!</p> <p>The news today: OpenVMS 8.4 beta has been released for field testing [<span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;"><a href="http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvmsft/">http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvmsft/</a>]. If you want to participate, you can get the register online. Once approved, you can download the release instead of having to order DVDs, as we have traditionally done. This is a good way to help the planet and get the latest code to test!</span></p> <p><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;">Some of the new features, according to an e-mail that I saw, include:</span></p> <p><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:'Times New Roman';mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;"></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">Cluster over IP</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">2 TB Volume Support </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">Host-based volume-shadowing support for upto 6 shadow sets</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">Integrity RAD support </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">Performance and reliability enhancements</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">TCP/IP enhancements </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';">Support of OpenVMS as a guest operating system with HPVM (Field test available shortly) </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';"></span><span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;COLOR:black;FONT-FAMILY:'Futura Bk','sans-serif';"></span></p> <p>Details, as always, are available on the web site [http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvmsft/].</p> <p>Jacob</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>A whole other kind of cloud computing for the 2012 Olympics</h1> <p>Charlie Bess — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:48:00 GMT</p> <p>This <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8350770.stm">article from the BBC</a> describes a huge piece of infrastructure being proposed for the <a href="http://www.london2012.com/">London Olympics</a>.</p> <p>"A giant "digital cloud" that would "float" above London's skyline has been outlined by an international team of architects, artists and engineers.</p> <p>The construction would include 120 m (400 ft) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data."</p> <p>This big project promises to be funded entirely by micro-payments from the public (which would also determine its final size), and be completely self-powered, relying on a combination of solar power and regenerative braking from the lifts in the towers. </p> <p>I wonder: What kind of zoning laws they have in London? If this is built how long it would stay up? It's a good think that England has relatively mild weather. I can't even imagine this kind of structure surviving a Dallas thunderstorm. It would likely be in Louisiana before long.</p> <p>(Please visit the site to view this media)</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Getting to the Point - UNIX Clustering</h1> <p>jacob.van-ewyk@hp.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:37:00 GMT</p> <p> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">I'm getting over my jet lag from the Frankfurt training, and preparing for the training in Kuala Lumpur in a few weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>It's great to see colleagues that I've worked with and supported for years in person from time to time, catch up with sales reps, and hear the feedback that customers have been providing to them.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">One of the things I'm covering in the training is High Availability for HP-UX 11i v3 systems. Let's face it - if you aren't looking for highly available systems, you probably aren't buying a commercial UNIX. HP Serviceguard ships on just less than 50% of all the servers that go out the door with HP-UX 11i - and a lot of those other systems support production systems that run clustering software.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">One of the main themes of this part of my training is that HP Serviceguard is great. We have Gabriel Consulting surveys that show that customers prefer HP Serviceguard over other UNIX clustering software [<a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/os/hpux11i-competitive-solaris-high-availability.html">http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/os/hpux11i-competitive-solaris-high-availability.html</a>]. However, that difference is relatively minor, as all the commercial UNIX offerings have a clustering offering that is proven in many production environments.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">So, what sets HP apart from the other UNIX vendors? In my opinion, it is the integration with the applications, and some of the unique value that we can provide. Oracle RAC provides great uptime capabilities for database instances. However, HP Serviceguard Extensions for RAC [<a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-sgerac.html">http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-sgerac.html</a>] and the HP Serviceguard Storage Management Suite [<a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-storage-management-suite-overview.html">http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-storage-management-suite-overview.html</a>] provide some unique capabilities that enhance an Oracle RAC environment such as: extended distance active-active clusters, certified by Oracle; not only great performance and high availability for Oracle RAC and other applications, but also with the file system management to extend disks, get snapshots of storage, and more, all while the database is still online.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">For SAP, HP provides other unique value. The HP Serviceguard Extensions for SAP (SGeSAP) [<a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-sgesap.html">http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/w1/en/os/hpux11i-serviceguard-sgesap.html</a>] works with liveCache to provide a hot standby. The result is that if an SAP instance goes down, SGeSAP will have SAP back up and running at full performance within 2 minutes. This is compared to failing an SAP instance over, rebuilding the Live Cache (often 2 hours), and then have degraded performance for a some time after the SAP instance restarts.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">This is another great example of how HP, especially in mission critical environments, gets to know our customers beyond just the hardware and operating system, and helps solve our customers real world problems - even if technically the issues aren't just OS, but non-HP applications that work on top of it. We can still partner to create best of breed environments, but provide unique value for those environments.</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">Is the application integration the reason that our customers seem to prefer HP-UX 11i for availability over other UNIX operating systems? Do we actually provide additional value that keeps the applications up and running, even if they already have built in high availability? What other areas can we tackle to provide additional value to our customers?</p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;"> </p> <p style="font-size:11pt;margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;">Jacob</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Energy Management for PC's- Should This Be an IT Metric?</h1> <p>brucemichelson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:51:00 GMT</p> <p>Green PC's is a topic that is considerably more than only energy management. While I do not want to discount any other aspect of sustainability, recent discussions in the day to day conversations with businesses has led me today to focus on energy management or perhaps,better said, energy consumption as a starting point for sustainability for this posting on the blog. </p> <p>As is the case with all of my blogging, the opinions expressed are my own and not those of my employer. </p> <p>As common ground, it is widely known and understood that newer PC's, both desktops and laptops, consume less power than their previous year counterparts. Depending upon the age of the devices, the power consumpution can range from a difference of $30 to $50 annually depending upon various considerations. In my dialogs with businesses, one of the key themes that I almost continually observe is that while PC conservation counter measures are widely understood, IT itself does typcially not participate in the benefits. The actually dollar impact is usually held within the facilities groups and then accrues to the corporate organization. </p> <p>It is also frequently acknowledged that without IT enabling the counter measures (such as power settings, governance, reporting, base lining, third party software, etc.) energy management in client computing would be sub-optimzed. </p> <p>In these tough economic times, stewardship is a solid strategy, but at the end of the day, quite often the dialog could end up with "what have you done to reduce your expenditures, not any department's or group's other than your own". In other words, "what have you done for me lately". This places IT in a precarious position- stewardship and the time investment required, or focus on other areas that directly impact the IT budget. Are you seeing the same or similar dynamic?</p> <p>As power management becomes a larger dollar figure since older PC's result in a larger refresh typically, the potential impact becomes significant. Depending on the business case, energy management (and other aspects of green computing) are identified and are drivers of change.</p> <p>I believe that there will be a point in time, hopefully in the near term, where IT will be able to secure benefits from power management on the client computing side, it typcially occurs already on the data center side. The power consumption amounts can now be base lined and measured, and easily reported for substantiation. My opinion is that just as IT allocates costs to the business units for IT support, IT should also receive an allocation back to offset the IT budget for establishing a program which reduces the enterprise's overall cost of doing buisness. This would then reduce the business unit allocation, making it easier for IT to execute and implement client computing strategies that benefit the entire organization.</p> <p>As IT is asked to reduce the year to year spend and continuously improve with fewer resources, power manangement is usually low hanging fruit in the sense of immediate fiscal year impact. However, if there is no formal reduction in the IT spend, it may not count. </p> <p>It would be a shame if organizations miss the overall opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint and all of the attendent benefits because of a metric recognition issue in the business, but yet it is occurring. Perhaps business should treat energy management in a holistic approach which would provide accounting entries that could offset either the investments (resources and software) plus reduce the IT budget since in reality IT is doing more with less, it is just coming from a different budget or account. </p> <p>Accounting issues aside, there is a larger picture. Energy management is a part of the larger story board in sustainability, and as such it is a project. Projects are typcially far reaching orgnaizationally and the project plan needs to consider the appropriate metrics to enable IT to not only engage, but to engage with the empowerment that is derived from metric recognition. What do you think?</p> <p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>CEO of Kaiser Permanente Engages in IT and Health Care Discussion</h1> <p>susan.biddle — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:22:00 GMT</p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Consolas;">HP is hosting a free <a href="http://www.hp.com/large/campaign/input/index.html">webcast</a> featuring the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, George Halvorson - taking place today, Wednesday, November 18 at 2:30 pm ET.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Consolas;"></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Consolas;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Consolas;">Halvorson has written several health care reform books as well as led the effort for Kaiser Permanente to expand electronic connectivity between doctors and patients.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>In this webcast, you'll have the opportunity to gain key insights into Halvorson's success aligning Kaiser's IT infrastructure with better customer service, automated patient records, standardized patient data and more.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Consolas;"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Consolas;">Don’t miss this <a href="http://www.hp.com/large/campaign/input/index.html">conversation</a> today at 2:30 pm ET.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Russian students win HP JA Global Business Challenge Award</h1> <p>jeanne2007 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:38:00 GMT</p> <p>Wow! Nearly 1000 students participated in this year`s JA Global Business Challenge and eight teams made it to the final. In the end, the Russian Team Topol-M won the prestigious award, which included a cash prize of US $3,000. Second place was awarded to Team 4 Life from Kazakhstan and Team Kiki Phi from China came in third. Congratulations to all of you! </p> <p>The HP Global Business Challenge is a business simulation game devised by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ja.org">Junior Achievement</a> which has been supported by HP over the last years. It is a global competition, in which student teams from secondary schools and universities run virtual corporations. The challenge is based on an online programme, where the students have to make specific business decisions for their companies. The aim is that the students acquire business knowledge and skills and understand the real effect of the decisions that they make. </p> <p>For more information about this year´s HP Global Business Challenge Award, <a target="_blank" href="http://h41111.www4.hp.com/globalcitizenship/uk/en/bulletin/31/news2.html">please read this article</a> or go to the HP Global Business Challenge information <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ja.org/involved/involved_students_comp_hpgbc.shtml%20">website</a>. </p> <p>Jeannette Weisschuh</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The best way to manage VMware environments</h1> <p>pspielvogel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:28:00 GMT</p> <p>Virtualization management seems to be the hottest topic for discussion, among both customers, partners, and my product marketing and product management peers. I was recently involved in a conversation with some sales people about why HP’s approach is unique.</p> <p>The reference platform for virtualization management of VMware environments is vCenter (formerly Virtual Center). But, many customers do not want their virtualization experts to spend their (very expensive) time managing first level events. So, they look to a centralized management console such as Operations Manager to handle events from both the virtual and physical IT infrastructure. This is the value behind a consolidated event and performance management approach. </p> <p>So, the challenge is how to get information about the virtual infrastructure into central event console. The old way, which we used to do, was to install our agents on the VMware hypervisor. We worked closely with VMware to ensure that it worked and was supportable but customers got nervous because the general advice is "do not install anything in the hypervisor". Obviously, if the hypervisor becomes unstable then all of the virtual machines suffer.</p> <p>The new, and recommended by VMware, approach is to use the vMA or “vSphere Management Assistant”. The vMA is a pre-build Linux virtual machine. It is built and owned by VMware and is downloaded free of charge from their web site. You run the vMA just like any other virtual machine. </p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/managementsoftware/1_5F00_console_5F00_physical_5F00_virtual.jpg"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/managementsoftware/1_5F00_console_5F00_physical_5F00_virtual.jpg"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/managementsoftware/1_5F00_console_5F00_physical_5F00_virtual.jpg"></a></p> <p>The vMA includes all of the VMware-approved and supported interfaces and APIs to enable access to VMware environment monitoring. It provides access to information such as current configuration of the VMs, fault information and very accurate performance information. This is the new way that VMware wants other management systems to get their information from the hypervisor. vMA provides more granular, fine grained, and real-time information than you can get from vCenter. HP was the first vendor to release a management product using the vMA.</p> <p>We install our agent and Virtualization SPI onto the vMA and make use of the interfaces. One vMA can provide access to monitoring information from multiple VMware server hosts. The “resolution” of the data that we get with the Virtualization SPI vs. vCenter is really just a reflection on what customers told us they wanted. I'm sure that VMware could provide much of the same detail - certainly for a VMware server - but they did not. Customers told us they wanted more - "Don't just give us what Virtual Center provides, go deeper".</p> <p>The advantage of using the HP Virtualization SPI and Operations Manager is that you can see very granular fault and performance data for both physical and virtual infrastructure in your Operations Manager console. This means your tier 1 operators can manage events and handle basic triage and remediation functions. This keeps your virtualization experts focused on more strategic tasks, until they need to manage an escalation. </p> <p>This is just one example of HP’s close ties with VMware. We also have integration between HP Insight Control and vCenter that allows customers to manage both physical and virtual infrastructure through the VMware vCenter console. <a href="http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/hp-vmworld09.html" title="Insight Control for vCenter">We announced this capability at VMworld in September</a>. <br />This is aimed at server administrators who want a single expert tool for troubleshooting complex problems that could span the hardware and hypervisor. </p> <p>For <a href="http://www.hp.com/go/opc" title="HP Operations Center">HP Operations Center</a>, Jon Haworth and Peter Spielvogel. </p> <p>Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps <a href="http://twitter.com/HPITOps">http://twitter.com/HPITOps</a></p> <p>Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn. </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>HP Leads in Managed Print Services – For a Reason</h1> <p>sherri.stuart@hp.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:51:00 GMT</p> <p></p> <p> </p> <p>Mike Feldman <br />Vice President and General Manager <br />Managed Enterprise Solutions<br />IPG-Americas </p> <p>Onward and upward as they say! HP’s Managed Print Services (MPS) has once again been recognized as the leader in the space by a leading analyst firm.</p> <p>I am thrilled to report that in a recent survey conducted by IDC, <a href="http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2009/091116xa.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news">HP was identified as a leader in their "Managed Print Services – Global Market and Provider Analysis</a>," with the highest share of new and outstanding MPS contracts among hardcopy manufacturers.</p> <p>This, in the wake of recognition by Gartner as leading in MPS vision, and Photizo as MPS market share leader.</p> <p>Lucky for HP? Not so much. We see this as truly a reflection of hard work and commitment meeting opportunity. As you’ve heard me say before, HP has steadily made major inroads in the business printing industry by doing the hard work up front - transforming our portfolio, software, services, programs and skills to align with our customers’ evolving needs. By successfully striving to provide customers with the best choice of partner to help them reduce imaging and printing costs, improve efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint, HP has taken the lead in the industry.</p> <p>To receive accolades from top analyst firms such as IDC, Gartner and Photizo Group is a testament to HP’s commitment to its customers. </p> <p>A lot of hard work, and a lot of continuous improvement are at play here. And an enormous thank you to all our enterprise printing customers for their vote of confidence in HP and for making us number one in the industry!</p> <p>I can assure you that we are extremely proud of this recognition; at the same time, I can assure you that we are not apt to rest on our laurels.</p> <p>Look out for more exciting news like this coming from HP!</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>CEO of Kaiser Permanente Engages in IT and Health Care Discussion</h1> <p>sherri.stuart@hp.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:58:00 GMT</p> <p></p> <p> </p> <p>Mike Feldman <br />Vice President and General Manager <br />Managed Enterprise Solutions<br />IPG-Americas </p> <p>Hi Everyone, </p> <p>A little something to help us all stretch our thinking around a hot topic for most of us these days – health care…. </p> <p>After the success of our first Input/Output Webcast session with WIRED’s, Chris Anderson, I’m pleased to announce the second installment featuring the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, George Halverson – taking place tomorrow, Wednesday, November 18. </p> <p>After opening up an important dialogue on technology and its importance in the traditional business world, this next session titled “IT Making the Biggest Impact in Health Care Reform,” will certainly spark a riveting discussion. </p> <p>What I enjoy most about these are the interactive conversations, allowing dialogue to flow seamlessly and actively engage listeners through Twitter. By integrating social media with the exploration of IT’s integral role in health care reform, we hope to foster a profound impact and bigger takeaway from these sessions. </p> <p>Halverson has written several health care reform books as well as led the effort for Kaiser Permanente to expand electronic connectivity between doctors and patients. In light of the current debate over health care reform, I am looking forward to hearing from Halverson and gaining insight into his success integrating technology and the health care industry. </p> <p>Don’t miss the <a href="http://www.inputcreatesoutput.com">conversation</a> at 2:30 pm ET on November 18th. Start submitting your questions now! <a href="http://inputcreatsoutput.com/"> </a></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>HP IT Forum and Cloud</h1> <p>markjgrindle — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:30:00 GMT</p> <p><span style="font-size:9pt;color:black;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';">So this week is the HP IT Forum in Austin TX and I will be one of the HP attendees. For those of you that aren't familiar with this event (sorry, it is by invitation only), it is a great forum run by HP's IT team. It is a non-sales event; in fact HP sales people are not allowed to attend. Only HP IT personnel and HP people that deliver HP's data center transformation services are allowed to be there. The customers that are invited are large customers that are interested in, or executing, transformational initiatives. The focus of all of the speakers is the latest news from HP IT and an update on recent accomplishments driven by our internal transformation. Now the reason I share this isn't to make people that aren't invited jealous or to advertise but to comment on what interests the customer attendees. Although many people have signed up to hear about End User Services, Transformation, Virtualization, and other sessions, far and away the most popular sessions are on Cloud. As I've stated in a previous post, Cloud is exciting and all the major technology companies are producing offerings in the area. The services range from identifying cloud candidates to selecting cloud suppliers to managing cloud environments. But again, I'll restate that I think people are spending a lot of time and effort on a technology that they might not quite be ready to implement. I don't think people should (or will) slow down but we have to be thoughtful as we go forward. Is your IT Management team ready to not only embrace Cloud technologies but able to manage it? This is true managed shared services and it takes a LOT of organizational change, process change, and cultural change. We have to move fast and be ready to enable this technology and we must make sure our businesses don’t start implementing without us. It has been a long, hard journey to stop our businesses from buying technology and then handing over to us to run - some are even still fighting this battle. We don’t' want business groups selecting Cloud providers without working with IT. Otherwise, your business will have multiple Cloud solutions that may not be safe, may not be cost effective, and may not be sustainable. So absolutely run to your nearest Cloud session and learn all you can but PLAN what you will do and make sure business needs are really being addressed.</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Interesting Blog Post</h1> <p>Scott Berg — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:46:00 GMT</p> <p>Bob Greenberg (RGA) and Chris Curtin (HP) posted an interesting post on The Huffington Post regarding the control surrounding digital marketing…. A timely topic for all of us. </p> <p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-curtin-and-bob-greenberg/digital-beyond-our-contro_b_352357.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-curtin-and-bob-greenberg/digital-beyond-our-contro_b_352357.html</a> </p> <p>Scott</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Create Change</h1> <p>Scott Berg — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:35:00 GMT</p> <p>A bold statement to say the least…but HP’s latest social media program is centered around that very phrase “Create Change.” When you purchase HP product through our online store, HP will donate 4% of the proceeds to one of seven charities listed…. Everything from Susan G. Komen to the American Red Cross to the World Wildlife Fund. </p> <p>And you can post or send the offer to others you know through a variety of social platforms. </p> <p><a href="http://h30484.www3.hp.com/CreateChange/index.html">http://h30484.www3.hp.com/CreateChange/index.html</a> </p> <p>Scott</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Colorcon On-Dose ID Anti-Counterfeiting Technology</h1> <p>StevenSimske — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:42:00 GMT</p> <p>In July, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided "guidance advocating greater use of physical chemical identifiers (PCIDs) in drug formulations as a cost-effective way of authenticating genuine products from fakes." <br /><br />Colorcon has responded with its "On-Dose ID tagging technology", for labeling individual drug tablets (although I didn't at time of writing see mention of it at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.colorcon.com/home">http://www.colorcon.com/home</a> ).<br /><br />"The microscopic tags, which are incorporated into immediate-release film coatings for oral solid dose forms, can hold encrypted information ranging from lot and batch numbers to logos, text and other brand identification symbols. Tablets labelled with the 75 – 110 micron sized tags can be read using the portable “Vision” optical viewing system developed by Colorcon’s partner ARmark Authentication Technologies." <br /><br />Please see the full article on in-Pharma's site here:</p> <p><a href="http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Materials-Formulation/Colorcon-rolls-out-On-Dose-ID-anti-counterfeiting-tech/?c=JiBz%2FX6W8971ORXdDDv0AQ%3D%3D&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter%2BDaily">http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Materials-Formulation/Colorcon-rolls-out-On-Dose-ID-anti-counterfeiting-tech/?c=JiBz%2FX6W8971ORXdDDv0AQ%3D%3D&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter%2BDaily</a><br /><br />File this under "special approach, special reader needed."</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>Steve</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Security--another offshoring risk</h1> <p>StevenSimske — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:29:00 GMT</p> <p>A terse but excellent article on IEEE's USA Today's Engineer site today focuses on the often forgotten--or at least ignored--risk of offshoring. National security.</p> <p>The full article is at: <a href="http://www.todaysengineer.org/2009/Nov/backscatter.asp">http://www.todaysengineer.org/2009/Nov/backscatter.asp</a>. The most salient quote is:</p> <p>"One area the [National Academy of Engineering] study gave relatively less attention to, listing it last in a series of ten findings, was offshoring’s impact on national security. In that regard, its main concern seemed to center on the possibility of detailed plans and other information about U.S. buildings and infrastructure falling into “the wrong hands,” and that maliciously placed code might compromise the security of DOD networks. Yet back in 1988, the Defense Science Board called the dependence of the U.S. military on foreign parts dangerously high."</p> <p>I have argued in several previous blogs that it is not just national security--but any product security--that may suffer with offshoring. Offshoring is a bandage, not a cure. Always temporary in nature, it is founded on the assumption that labor will be cheaper elsewhere. Cheaper than the differential cost of transportation, shipping, inefficiencies of distributed teams, etc. Guess what? As many are seeing now, the cycle lasts less than ten years, and the first (and second) wave of offshorers are now offshoring themselves. Does this increase product security? Statistics argue otherwise (ref. WEF estimate of counterfeiting as 8% of world trade).</p> <p>Offshoring makes a lot of sense when those remote, skilled professionals are <em>invested</em> in your company and strategy. Otherwise, it's a short-term fix to a problem that goes unaddressed.</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>Steve</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>New solutions & partners from ProCurve ONE</h1> <p>andybryant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:00 GMT</p> <p> Today I'm excited to tell you about a multi-partner update to the HP ProCurve ONE Alliance program, adding new partners and solutions that will make it easier to integrate network applications with HP ProCurve networks. These updates enhance solutions we have from our existing market leading partners, extend the number of applications and partners we're offering through the program, and provide services that our channel partners can use to broaden their offering to customers. </p> <p>These updates include five new integrated solutions, three new appliance based solutions, two new reseller-assist partners, and three certified solutions: </p> <p><strong>Five new <a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/integratedPartners.htm">ProCurve ONE Integrated</a> solutions (running on the <a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/network/index.htm">ProCurve ONE Services zl Module</a>):</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/aastra/aastra.htm">Aastra</a></strong>: Two new integrated Enterprise class IP Telephony/Unified Communication solutions integrated with the ProCurve ONE zl Module - Aastra 5000 and Aastra MX-ONE</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/fortinet/fortinet.htm">Fortinet</a></strong>: New Fortigate-ONE software based multi-threat security platform integrated with the ProCurve ONE zl module and HP ProCurve Network Immunity Manager</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/sourcefire/sourcefire.htm">SourceFire</a></strong>: New SourceFire Intrusion Prevention Solutions (IPS) with network and user awareness integrated on the ProCurve ONE zl module in early 2010; from a new alliance partner</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/vantronix/vantronix.htm">.vantronix</a></strong>: New BGP edge routing solution with VRF and PBR integrated with ProCurve ONE zl module</li> </ul> <p><strong>Three new appliance based solutions (not running on the module, but may have other integration points):</strong> </p> <ul> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/aeroscout/aeroscout.htm">AeroScout</a></strong>: Real-Time Location Solutions (RTLS) over Wi-Fi for ProCurve MSM controllers and wireless access products; from a new alliance partner</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/sonicwall/sonicwall.htm">SonicWALL</a></strong>: Integrated VPN connectivity and integration with HP ProCurve Network Immunity Manager</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/stillsecure/stillsecure.htm">StillSecure</a></strong>: SafeAccess network access control (NAC) solutions integrated with ProCurve’s Identity Driven Manager</li> </ul> <p><strong>Two new partners in a new ‘Reseller Assist’ Services Provider partner category:</strong> </p> <p><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/stillsecure/stillsecure.htm">StillSecure</a> and <a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/traversa/traversa.htm">Traversa</a> have joined the ecosystem, to provide security solutions and services to ProCurve’s existing resellers in North America. ProCurve resellers can take these solutions and combine them with their own product offerings, and then sell the complete package under their own brand. This allows our partners to deliver security services to their customers without having to become security experts. (We'll be adding EMEA partners later in the year.) </p> <p><strong>Three new ProCurve ONE Solution Certifications</strong>: </p> <p>A number of existing standalone, appliance-based solutions have now been tested by HP ProCurve and are ‘certified’ with a ProCurve ONE Solution Certification. This comes with an Application Integration Guide providing guidance on how to best connect 3rd party components with the HP ProCurve network. </p> <ul> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/avaya/avaya.htm">Avaya</a></strong>: HP ProCurve 3500, 5400, 2910, 2610, 2520 and 6600 Series switches are now certified compliant by the Avaya DevConnect program; and Avaya solutions are now ProCurve ONE Solution Certified, tested and documented through an Application Integration Guide</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/f5/f5.htm">F5</a></strong>: BigIP Local Traffic Manager Application Delivery Networking appliance has been certified as ProCurve ONE Solution Certified, and documented via an Application Integration Guide</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.procurve.com/one/alliance/mcafee/mcafee.htm">McAfee</a></strong>: McAfee IPS appliance has been ProCurve ONE Solution Certified and integrated with HP ProCurve Network Immunity Manager.</li> </ul> <p>These updates enhance solutions from our existing market leading partners, extend the number of applications and partners the ProCurve ONE program offers, and provides the services that our channel partners need to broaden their offerings and help customers meet their needs. </p> <p><strong>More information</strong> For more information on the new ProCurve ONE solutions mentioned above, visit <a href="http://www.procurve.com/one">ProCurve ONE</a> on the web. </p> <p><strong><a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/home/?status=New%20apps%20%26%20partners%20from%20HP%20ProCurve%20ONE%20-%205%20integrated,%203%20appliance,%202%20services,%203%20certified%20-%20@AndyAtHP%20http%3A//ow.ly/CIRr"><span style="color:#00ccff;">Tweet this</span><span style="font-size:medium;color:#0000ff;"> </span></a></strong></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Tech Ed Days 4 & 5</h1> <p>CalvinZ — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:03:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">By Ian Selway, WW Solution Marketing Manager</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">So as day 5 is really only a short day, I’ve waited to send my day 4 comments and I’m combining the summary of days 4 and 5 here at TechEd Berlin. Overnight the Wednesday to the Thursday, our stand designers added a whole bunch of balloons to celebrate the 20th anniversary of HP’s ProLiant range of servers. All day we also had cupcakes on the stand that not only reminded delegates of the occasion but also helped attract folks to the stand. I’ve attached a picture of the HP stand all decked out with balloons. Of course the other big news from overnight was the announcement of HP’s intention to acquire 3Com. We had expected a lot of questions from those attending. I’m not sure what the experience of others was, but I don’t think (aside from HP folks asking) that I had a single question asked. I guess everyone is so busy focusing on the bigger things happening between Microsoft and HP.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">A lot of our customers who came out with us last night stopped by to tell us what a great time they had and we even found customers who had been pure server customers who came across to the storage section to look at the MDS 600. It seems word has spread about the flexibility, scalability and cost of these units and I spent a lot of time on Thursday talking about zoned storage for HP BladeSystem. When we were talking about deploying MDS 600 for Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes at under $2/GB, customers again told us how great this would be for deploying larger mailboxes. Several customers told us that they liked the idea that HP could offer a choice of storage and that we weren’t tied to only offering DAS or SAN but could offer both. I spent a lot of time directing our visitors to our <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hpcollateral.com/wsmnet_bin/ecoCollateralMain/ecocollateralmain.aspx?gipn=ecouser&ecogroup=MSTechEMEA2009">eco-friendly collateral</a> site so they could download the whitepapers, best practice guides and sizer information. The other great thing about being here at TechEd is the ability to meet with the key developers from Microsoft. I had three really good interactions with Microsoft on Thursday and I think when I get back to the US our engineering and marketing teams can really start demonstrating why Microsoft is going to be so good deployed on HP’s Converged Infrastructure.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Day 5 at TechEd was a lot shorter, and that was very welcome given what an active week it had been so far. A number of us from the StorageWorks team again supported the Microsoft virtualization kiosk over in their hall. For anyone who’s visited these types of shows, you’ll know the last day seems spent handing out all those trinkets the vendors bring to these shows, swapping your ‘swag’ for other vendors swag, and making sure you don’t have to carry any of it back. It never ceases to amaze me what delegates want to take home or back to the office. We did a huge trade in ‘Magic 8-Ball’ key rings. As soon as they went up on the booth, they disappeared as if by magic…. That said, it did enable us to engage in conversation as we attempted to address any of those last minute questions. Just after lunch, TechEd Berlin 2009 closed and it was time to close the booth, dismantle the demonstration and take time to reflect on the past week.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">Everyone I spoke with from HP agreed we had a great week. I think we managed to register well over 1,000 attendees or 13% of the total registered visitors. We took a significant number of customers through our NDA room, and most importantly, we demonstrated just how HP Converged Infrastructure comes together to be such an impressive platform for deploying and running Microsoft applications such as Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2. We presented our StorageWorks integration capabilities with Hyper-V to over 600 people and demonstrated our broader storage offering to a significant number of delegates. Thanks must go to the European organizers including John Stewardson, Till Stimberg and others too numerous to mention, employees from the worldwide business groups who helped support and to De Umphry from the events team. Here’s looking forward to TechEd EMEA 2010… May it be as successful as this year.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/datastorage/HP-Booth-20th-Anniversary.jpg"></a></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>New products and solutions built for extreme scale computing environments introduced at Supercomputing 09 conference (SCO9)</h1> <p>Kristie Popp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:01:00 GMT</p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt;">By Erin Collopy<br /><br />This week, HP’s high-performance computing (HPC) team lands in Portland for the annual <a href="http://sc09.supercomputing.org/"><span>Supercomputing 09</span></a> conference (SCO9), where they’ll be meeting with loads of customers, partners, press and industry analysts to discuss the hot new technologies and trends in HPC.</span></p> <div></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;">To coincide with SC09, <a href="http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2009/091116c.html"><span>HP announced a whole host of new products and solutions built for extreme scale computing environments</span></a>, including 2 powerful new ProLiant servers which are on display at the event. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;">The <a href="http://www.hp.com/servers/bl2x220c-g6"><span>HP ProLiant BL2x220c G6</span></a> is an updated version of the innovative 2-in1 blade server that HP introduced last year. Delivering the compute power of 2 blade servers in the physical space of 1, the BL2x220 is perfect for HPC environments who are not only focused on maximum performance, but who are also often hitting the wall in terms of physical floor space and/or power. It has 33 percent higher memory capacity than the previous generation and delivers excellent energy efficiency.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="bullettext"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><span>The first AMD processor based SL-server, the </span><a href="http://www.hp.com/servers/sl165z-g6"><span>HP ProLiant SL165z G6</span></a><span> uses HP’s innovative “skinless” system architecture built on a lightweight rail and tray design to dramatically reduce capital, facilities and shipping costs while using a fraction of the space normally required within a data center. The SL165z’s ultra-efficient, modular design lowers server power consumption by18% and costs by 10%.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Come by HP’s SC09 booth 1025 at SC09 in Portland this week and be among the first to get hands-on with these hot new servers.</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>W3C Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios – Papers Available Online</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:02:00 GMT</p> <p>The position papers submitted to the W3C Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios (17/18 November 2009, Luxembourg) are now available <a href="http://www.w3.org/2009/policy-ws/papers/">online</a>.</p> <p>A few interesting positions have been made by various authors: I am sure the debates at the workshop are going to be useful and interesting for the security and access control community.</p> <p>The workshop <a href="http://www.w3.org/2009/policy-ws/agenda.html">agenda</a>, shows the accepted papers and planned presentations. </p> <p> One of the accepted position papers is the one I co-authored with a few colleagues: </p> <p>"<a href="http://www.w3.org/2009/policy-ws/papers/Papanikolaou.pdf">Towards an Integrated Approach to the Management, Specification and Enforcement of Privacy Policies</a>, Marco Casassa Mont, Siani Pearson (Systems Security Lab, HP Labs, Bristol, UK), and Sadie Creese, Michael Goldsmith, Nick Papanikolaou (International Digital Library, University of Warwick, UK)"</p> <p>We make a strong position point about the existing gap between risk assessment and management - driven by a variety of business, legal, social and security requirements - and current low level technical access control languages, policies and frameworks (control points), that can only partially take into account the richness and variety of these requirements.</p> <p>We believe that the community, instead of focusing their effort in producing yet another access control language and framework might need to make progress on bridging this gap - to get their proposals leveraged by the industry. In our paper we make an initial proposal based on introducing an intermediate "conceptual model" to reason and identify the nature of existing gaps - as well as ways to address them/drive new technical requirements.</p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site --- </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>CfP Workshop – Security and Privacy of Pervasive Systems and Smart Devices</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:59:00 GMT</p> <p>Please consider submitting a paper at the <a href="http://www.wistp.org/">WISTP 2010 workshop</a> focusing on security and privacy topics for pervasive systems and smart devices. The submission deadline is November, 10<sup>th</sup>:</p> <p>"The impact of pervasive and smart devices on our daily lives is ever increasing, and the rapid technological development of information technologies ensures that this impact is constantly changing. It is imperative that these complex and resource constrained technologies are not vulnerable to attack. This workshop will consider the full impact of the use of pervasive and smart technologies on individuals, and society at large, with regard to the security and privacy of the systems that make use of them.<br /><br />The workshop seeks submissions from academia and industry presenting novel research on all theoretical and practical aspects of security and privacy of pervasive systems and smart devices, as well as experimental studies of fielded systems.<br />We encourage submissions that address the application of security technology, the implementation of systems, and lessons learned. We encourage submissions from other communities such as law and business that present these communities' perspectives on technological issues."</p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site ---</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Updated HPL Web Page with my R&D Work and Other Topics</h1> <p>marcocasassamont — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:57:00 GMT</p> <p>I eventually found time to update <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Marco_Casassa_Mont/">my HP Labs personal web page</a>, where I describe my current R&D work in the security and identity management, research activities.</p> <p>I received a few emails related to a <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/archive/2009/10/10/116411.aspx">recent post of mine</a> (where I announced an extension of the topics discussed in this blog) asking for more details. Now you can find additional details in my HPL web page.</p> <p>My focus is indeed on Security, Identity Management and Privacy. In my web page you can find project descriptions, recent publications and HPL technical reports of mine. Enjoy.</p> <p>--- Posted by Marco Casassa Mont (<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/mcm/Default.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">here</a>) ---</p> <p>--- NOTE: use this <a href="http://research-on-identitymanagement.blogspot.com/">mirror blog</a> if you prefer posting on an external blog site ---</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>About Converged Infrastructure by Jim Jackson</h1> <p>Kristie Popp — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:09:00 GMT</p> by Jim Jackson, About Converged Infrastructure About This Poster Hi, I’m Jim Jackson. I’ve recently joined the HP Infrastructure Software and BladeSystem team as the Vice-President of Marketing and want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and briefly explain how our new strategy ‘converges’ virtualized compute, storage and networks with facilities into a single shared-services environment to accelerate standardization, reduce operational costs and accelerate business...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/eyeonblades/archive/2009/11/16/about-converged-infrastructure-by-jim-jackson.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>The Myth of Photographic Reality</h1> <p>Eileen Fritsch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:45:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"><a href="http://www.joncanfield.com">By Jon Canfield</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">I recently wrote a review of Photoshop Elements 8 that covers most of the new features in this program. The review had almost immediate feedback from a few people deploring the ability to modify photographs with the recompose tool, with one person saying it reminded them of the Soviet propaganda techniques and George Orwell of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;">1984 </i>fame. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>To hear these people, you’d think that photography became invalid with the advent of digital imaging.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Evidently there is a large body of people who believe a photograph should contain the truth and nothing but the truth, with no room for artistic freedom or expression. While I agree that photojournalism needs to be held to this type of standard (anyone remember National Geographic moving the pyramids to suit the cover?), most people just want a good photo that has some meaning to them.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Those of you reading these blog posts here at the HP Pro site aren’t in the majority – your skills are probably beyond what 99% of the photo-taking population can claim, and being able to improve a snapshot into something that is worth printing and framing is a welcome option.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">For those of us that are interested in fine art or expressive photography, reality isn’t always what interests us. Take the two different images shown below. The first, an old farm truck and barn in Eastern Oregon, is a rather plain and uncompelling image—if you saw the straight shot on a wall you most likely wouldn’t even pause. By doing some HDR tone mapping though, the image is much more eye catching. While I haven’t added anything to the image, it isn’t something you’d ever be likely to see with your eyes, so the reality-purists would decry this as a phony.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">The second image is an ancient bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California. I think this one can stand on its own as shot. It has good color, nice detail, and represents a true look at the scene. But, I prefer the black-and-white version below it. Once again, there’s nothing here that isn’t in the actual scene. But I’ve stripped the shot of color, making it something you’d never see in real life. Is this also a fake, manipulated image that is not to be trusted?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Photography has always been an expressive form for many people. As the person capturing the image, you should be able to control the final product just as an artist with paint and brushes can, or the sculptor with his chisel and marble. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Yes, photojournalism needs to have an accurate representation of what it is reporting on, but does a landscape, or fine art image need this? In my mind, the person that says yes is the one living in the Orwellian world.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">I’d love to hear your take on this. Am I living in my own fantasy world?</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>HP and Amateur Radio</h1> <p>Charlie Bess — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:49:00 GMT</p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/nextbigthingeds/antenna.gif"></a>I stumbled across this <a href="http://www.hp.com/united-states/reallife/hamradio.html">HP site talking about the use of HP computers in ham radio</a>. I've been a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio">ham radio </a>operator for almost 40 years, and was pleasantly surprised by this alignment of my interests. Being able to communicate with people from all over the world without relying on standard telecommunications infrastructure has a mystery and appeal all its own. Now with much more <a href="http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/digital.html">integration of radio and digital techniques</a> the computer is becoming an essential component of the hobby/service.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Solaris to Windows Migrations</h1> <p>jacob.van-ewyk@hp.com — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:00:00 GMT</p> <p>Based on all the news around Oracle and Sun, I know that there are a lot of Sun customers considering their options, especially if they are looking to replace older systems as the economy stabilizes and they are looking towards some growth next year. HP, and most of our competitors, offer a whole host of offerings for Sun customers who are looking to move. One of those options, especially since most people are already running Windows in their environment, is moving some of their mission critical applications to Windows, either in a scale up or a scale out environment.</p> <p>I got an e-mail from a co-worker, Dan, that I though I'd pass along. It may be of interest for people who are considering application redeployment on Windows.</p> <p>" Hi Jacob, <p> </p> <p>I know you are aware of the robust program HP has for users of Sun equipment to help them migrate to HP in light of the uncertainties surrounding Sun.<span> </span>This is the Sun Complete Care program [<a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/migrate-to-hp/sun-complete-care.html">http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/migrate-to-hp/sun-complete-care.html</a>].</p> <p> </p> <p>But I want you to also know about a special part of this program.<span> </span>We have teamed up with Microsoft and Intel to help those Sun users who may be thinking about moving to a windows environment.<span> </span>Windows on HP servers is a wonderfully cost-effective, reliable, and scalable alternative to Sun.<span> </span>It is also backed by three of the most stable and innovative companies in our industry.<span> </span>To introduce Sun users to the program we are recording a series of webinars that cover the topic of Sun migration to HP,<span> </span>Microsoft, and Intel, in general as well as one each focusing on SAP and business intelligence (BI).<span> </span>They are very informative and cover many of the whys, hows, and cost implications of such a move.</p> <p> </p> <p>The webinars can be found at<span> </span><a href="http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1256737022_263.html">http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1256737022_263.html</a></p> <p> </p> <p>In addition you can check out the joint HP/Microsoft/Intel web site established for this program at <a href="http://www.securefuturenow.com/">http://www.SecureFutureNow.com</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>Best regards,</p> <p>Dan"</p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>From cameraman to camerawoman in NIR imaging research</h1> <p>susie.wee — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:49:00 GMT</p> In the world of image processing research, it is important to have standard test images so people can compare their results. The cameraman image is a test image that has been used for decades. It can be found in many image processing textbooks and homework problems. Imaging and photography has come quite a long ways since then. Just for fun, here are a couple pictures I took during my trip to Cairo Egypt for ICIP 2009 and a brief introduction to some research that Professor Sabine Süsstrunk...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/wee/archive/2009/11/14/from-cameraman-to-camerawoman-in-nir-imaging-research.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now</h1> <p>Charlie Bess — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:28:00 GMT</p> <p><a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/nextbigthingeds/clouds.gif"></a>This week I've talked with a couple of organizations about cloud deployments and expected benefits. One thing that I found interesting is the difference in HP's perspective from other providers. </p> <p>When a service provider (like <a href="http://h10134.www1.hp.com/">HP Enterprise Services</a>) signs up for <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2009/03/09/cloud-myths-exploded-a-reaction.aspx">cloud</a>, we want to be sure that the software that runs in the cloud will be able to meet the business value perspective of the client. This probably comes from our historical focus on <a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/nextbigthingeds/archive/2006/05/09/paradox-of-excellence.aspx">service excellence</a> and <a href="http://h10134.www1.hp.com/news/features/5823/?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN">Designed for Run</a>. We expect to be held accountable for end-to end service levels. Other providers agree to SLAs but only within their datacenters -- which seems shockingly naive to me and may be a leading cause of cloud to tumble off the top of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle">hype cycle</a>.</p> <p>On the other hand, if it is just an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IaaS">IaaS</a> solution that is being provided, the decision of what to run and when to run it rests with the purchaser and the service provider just operates and maintains the operating environment. It may be viewed quite negatively if they try to tell an organization what should or shouldn't run in the cloud. This may be a hard mental shift for the folks who came from an Apps development, support and management background, but if that's what the market wants that's what needs to be done.</p> <p>Once the market comes off the peak of the hype cycle for cloud, standards are defined and the performance levels are understood, things will change. The cloud of today will look quite a bit different than in a few short years.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>SC09 Conference starts Monday in Portland</h1> <p>alanna.dwyer@hp.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:00:00 GMT</p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">Several of us are already in Portland, in advance of the HPC conference, to attend </span><a href="http://www.hp-cast.org/"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">HP-CAST</span></a><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">. HP-CAST is a user group focused on HPC, whose fall meeting is usually held right before the industry-wide SC event. This 13<sup>th</sup> Group Meeting just got kicked off this morning with a preview on next week’s technology announcements from HP, and updates from some HP-CAST members on site deployments and key research activities and objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Look for some announcements next week which will highlight some new sites.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://sc09.supercomputing.org/"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">SC09</span></a><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"> is the major HPC conference in the world – this year it is in Portland, Oregon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Portland is known for its environmental activism – making it appropriate site for the meeting this year, as customers and vendors are all driving to improve power utilization while driving performance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>HP booth’s will showcase datacenter power and efficiency technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>There’s a demo that highlights the SL line – the ProLiant SL2x170z just recorded the best SPECpower numbers for any server.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Other systems on display include latest ProLiant G6 BladeSystems, the ProLiant DL1000, and the new scalable storage system that was introduced last week (the </span><a href="http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/x9000/index.html"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">x9000 Network File System</span></a><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Accelerators and graphics-enabled servers will also be shown.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Cluster tools from HP and our partners will be shown – one of growing interest is ‘hybrid clusters of Linux and Windows’ – in which one can quickly change the operating environment to Linux or Windows stacks, to support specific workloads.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>The specific implementation we have is using Moab HPC Adaptive Suite to direct provisioning and scheduling based on workload, with </span><a href="http://h20311.www2.hp.com/HPC/cache/412128-0-0-0-121.html"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;">HP CMU</span></a><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"> managing the Linux stacks, and Windows HPC Server as the Windows base.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Drop by if you are in the area!</span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Making Live (Synchronous) Distance Learning Come Alive - Georgia Tech and DyKnow</h1> <p>jgvanides — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:08:00 GMT</p> <p>Ask anyone who has attended an online webinar presentation, a live "broadcast lecture", or viewed a lecture that has been video podcast, and chances are they were multitasking - big time. Let's face it: Without actually engaging the audience, a lecture is highly ineffective - and if it's an online, non-interactive lecture, it's like watching a television show - minus the entertainment value of advertising.</p> <p>Thankfully, innovation in instruction and technology is changing the equation, as is the case at Georgia Tech Savannah...</p>...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/highered/archive/2009/11/13/making-live-synchronous-distance-learning-come-alive-georgia-tech-and-dyknow.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Join us at the Converged Infrastructure Roadshow</h1> <p>Kristie Popp — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:42:00 GMT</p> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;mso-table-layout-alt:fixed;mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt;mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;" class="MsoNormalTable"> <tbody> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes;"> <td width="424" valign="top" style="padding-right:5.4pt;padding-left:5.4pt;padding-bottom:0in;width:318.3pt;padding-top:0in;background-color:transparent;mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt;border:black 1pt solid;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;mso-table-layout-alt:fixed;mso-padding-alt:0in .5pt 0in .5pt;" class="MsoNormalTable"> <tbody> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes;"> <td width="410" style="padding-right:0.5pt;padding-left:0.5pt;padding-bottom:0in;width:307.5pt;padding-top:0in;background-color:transparent;border:#f0f0f0;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:10pt;color:white;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;">Join HP at the </span></span></span><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';">HP Converged Infrastructure Roadshow</span></b></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;mso-table-layout-alt:fixed;mso-padding-alt:0in .5pt 0in .5pt;" class="MsoNormalTable"> <tbody> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes;"> <td width="10" style="padding-right:0.5pt;padding-left:0.5pt;padding-bottom:0in;width:7.5pt;padding-top:0in;background-color:transparent;border:#f0f0f0;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"> </span></span></p> </td> <td width="400" style="padding-right:0.5pt;padding-left:0.5pt;padding-bottom:0in;width:300pt;padding-top:0in;background-color:transparent;border:#f0f0f0;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';">Topics covered:</span></b></p> <ul> <li> <div class="MsoNormal"><span><strong><span style="mso-list:Ignore;"><span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span>Learning how to reduce your IT operations and maintenance resource costs</strong></span></div> </li> <li> <div class="MsoNormal"><strong><span>Remove trapped budget silos that are costly and underutilized</span><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';"> </span></strong></div> </li> <li> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';"><strong>Transform your Data Center to operate more efficiently</strong></span></span></div> </li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';">See how the HP <a href="http://www.seeuthere.com/event/m1c9c3a7-BI57S6WN02TC?dimid=DI_MEMBER_ID/&dicid=DI_TRACKING_CODE/&jumpid=em_edm/us/oct09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us&dimid=%3cDI_MEMBER_ID/%3e&dicid=%3cDI_TRACKING_CODE/%3e&jumpid=em_edm/us/nov09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us"><span>converged infrastructure</span></a> architecture is breaking down technology silos to simplify IT and accelerate business results.<br /><br /><b>Day 1 sessions will highlight the following: <br /></b><br />- Bulletproofing your virtualization strategy<br />- Why <a href="http://www.seeuthere.com/event/m1c9c3a7-BI57S6WN02TC?dimid=DI_MEMBER_ID/&dicid=DI_TRACKING_CODE/&jumpid=em_edm/us/oct09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us&dimid=%3cDI_MEMBER_ID/%3e&dicid=%3cDI_TRACKING_CODE/%3e&jumpid=em_edm/us/nov09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;">Converged Infrastructure</span></a> matters to your Data Center<br />- Control Aging Server Sprawl; New economics you can't ignore<br />- Unleash Trapped Capacity with Virtual Storage Infrastructure<br />- Get out of the Sparc, IBM mainframe and legacy rut with Integrity optimized infrastructure<br />- Changing Networking to Unlock Business Value<br /><br /><b>Day 2 sessions will highlight the following: <br /></b><br />- HP BladeSystem Matrix and Insight Software: <a href="http://www.seeuthere.com/event/m1c9c3a7-BI57S6WN02TC?dimid=DI_MEMBER_ID/&dicid=DI_TRACKING_CODE/&jumpid=em_edm/us/oct09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us&dimid=%3cDI_MEMBER_ID/%3e&dicid=%3cDI_TRACKING_CODE/%3e&jumpid=em_edm/us/nov09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us"><span>Converged Infrastructure</span></a> solution for delivering shared services<br />- Flex Fabric to dynamically connect resources<br />- Unified Storage for flexible, resilient scale-out storage <br />- BladeSystem with G6 processors for maximum performance and power efficiency<br />- Detailed technical teardown of competitive systems to see what’s really under the covers<br /><br /><a href="http://www.seeuthere.com/event/m1c9c3a7-BI57S6WN02TC?dimid=DI_MEMBER_ID/&dicid=DI_TRACKING_CODE/&jumpid=em_edm/us/oct09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us&dimid=%3cDI_MEMBER_ID/%3e&dicid=%3cDI_TRACKING_CODE/%3e&jumpid=em_edm/us/nov09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us"><span>We look forward to seeing you there!</span></a> <a href="http://www.seeuthere.com/event/m1c9c3a7-BI57S6WN02TC?dimid=%3cDI_MEMBER_ID/%3e&dicid=%3cDI_TRACKING_CODE/%3e&jumpid=em_edm/us/nov09/all/across-tsg/offers/1-7ko1j/mcc|ezch/mb-text1/servers/mb-converged-infrastructure-roadshow-us"><span>Register</span></a> to attend.</span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:white;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"></span></p> </td> <td width="21" valign="top" style="border-right:black 1pt solid;padding-right:5.4pt;border-top:black 1pt solid;padding-left:5.4pt;padding-bottom:0in;border-left:#f0f0f0;width:15.95pt;padding-top:0in;border-bottom:black 1pt solid;background-color:transparent;mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt;mso-border-left-alt:solid black .5pt;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"> </span></span></p> </td> <td width="193" valign="top" style="border-right:black 1pt solid;padding-right:5.4pt;border-top:black 1pt solid;padding-left:5.4pt;padding-bottom:0in;border-left:#f0f0f0;width:144.55pt;padding-top:0in;border-bottom:black 1pt solid;background-color:transparent;mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt;mso-border-left-alt:solid black .5pt;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><strong>US dates:</strong> <br /><br />Chicago, IL<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">December 8-9, 2009</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Atlanta, GA<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">December 10-11, 2009</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">New York City, NY<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">December 15-16, 2009</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Boston, MA<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">January 14-15, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Los Angeles, CA<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">January 19-20, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Seattle, WA<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">January 21-22, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Denver, CO<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">January 26-27, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Phoenix, AZ<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">January 28-29, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Dallas, TX<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">February 2-3, 2010</span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Houston, TX<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">February 4-5, 2010</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">San Francisco, CA<br /></span></span></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:Arial;">March 11-12, 2010</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Join us at the Converged Infrastructure Roadshow</h1> <p>Kristie Popp — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:56:00 GMT</p> Join HP at the HP Converged Infrastructure Roadshow Topics covered: Learning how to reduce your IT operations and maintenance resource costs Remove trapped budget silos that are costly and underutilized Transform your Data Center to operate more efficiently See how the HP converged infrastructure architecture is breaking down technology silos to simplify IT and accelerate business results. Day 1 sessions will highlight the following: - Bulletproofing your virtualization strategy - Why Converged Infrastructure...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/eyeonblades/archive/2009/11/13/join-hp-at-the-hp-converged-infrastructure-roadshow.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>Shared Services with HP BladeSystem Matrix - Live Webinar on November 19</h1> <p>Kristie Popp — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:11:00 GMT</p> Getting to Shared Services with HP BladeSystem Matrix What is the best way to deliver infrastructure and application services more quickly and consistently? How will shared services impact their IT infrastructure? Learn how you can get infrastructure by the pound , a ready to run infrastructure, when you need it. Join our live webcast on November 19, 8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time, with Illuminata Principal IT Advisor, Jonathan Eunice, and HP Chief Blade Strategist, Gary Thome, as they discuss...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/eyeonblades/archive/2009/11/13/Shared-Services-with-HP-BladeSystem-Matrix-Webinar.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>System Age and Maintenance Costs</h1> <p>jacob.van-ewyk@hp.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:04:00 GMT</p> <p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">One of the reasons that I came home between the training events in London and Frankfurt was to cover a customer briefing at the Cupertino Executive Briefing Center -although it also saved HP money, and let's face it, everyone's budget is still pretty tight.</p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">The briefing was an overview of the HP and HP IT Transformation. However, there was a specific deeper dive and conversation around our desktop management - everything from asset management, self serve processes, to help desk processes. While I often speak about mission critical environments, it is great to also have a glimpse into the desktop and notebook environments - especially since as a user, I'm a customer of our internal services.</p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">It's been a two years since I last got a new notebook, and I got to use some of the new processes in person. Instead of waiting for my business to have available funds for new notebooks, we now get automated e-mails when it is time to refresh our systems. We select our user profile, and a week or two later, the system shows up at our desk.</p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">Then, instead of someone from HP IT disappearing with our old and new system for half a day or more, we log into the new notebook, finish some minor set up ourselves. Both systems are then unplugged from the network, software is run on both systems, and all of our settings and data are copied to the new system. Even better, I can do this at home at night, so I'm not sitting around the office looking useless, waiting for my systems to come back. I have much less downtime, and IT doesn't have someone spending a lot of time just copying data from one system to another. Even better, they have made this process easy enough that most of my co-workers who normally call the helpdesk (or me) whenever they run into any sort of problem now do this on their own, with no help.</p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">But the interesting part of this past year is seeing the impact of the economy on our help desk. Due to the poor economy in 2009, HP pushed out the refresh on some systems by another 6 months. It turns out, that they can see a direct co-relation to the number of help desk calls as they did this, something that we could never track in the past. Users of systems that are older than our usual refresh age are now logging more calls, more downtime, and more repairs than they were in the past. We helped save the company some money during the economic downturn, but it is definitely driving up our maintenance budget. Since our goal here at HP is to keep our maintenance costs low, you can bet that this will change as the economy becomes more predictable. </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">However, the biggest difference today compared to a number of years ago is that we can now track the impact of decisions like pushing out the refresh rate for desktops and notebooks, something we never could do in the past.</p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">This begs the question about what happens in a mission critical environment. There are lots and lots of mission critical systems out there that have been in place for 5 years, 6 years, 10 years, or more. While the server life cycle definitely is longer than desktops and notebooks, at some point, we run into the same issue - old systems cost more to maintain than new systems (especially after the warranty expires). Just because the system is still up and running, and has been paid for, doesn't mean that it is cheaper than buying a new systems. We're figuring that out at HP for our internal use. </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;"> </p> <p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;">Does this apply outside of HP? Can you actually track the relationship between system age and maintenance costs?<span> </span>What have you found?</p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Working conditions: a worldwide issue</h1> <p>jeanne2007 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:14:00 GMT</p> <p>When we talk about working conditions in global supply chains, we often think of the human rights and labour issues in Asian factories that dominate the media. But what about working conditions in Europe? <a target="_blank" href="http://osha.europa.eu/en">The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work</a> conducted a survey among European workers focusing on the health and safety conditions of their workplaces. The main finding of the survey is that health and safety standards might suffer during the economic downturn. More information about the survey findings can be found <a target="_blank">here</a>. </p> <p>I found it interesting to see that the economic crisis impacts all different kinds of levels – including working conditions. I found it scary that three quarters of the respondents state that their ill health is related to their work and working conditions… The results of the survey are not too positive and are a cause for concern. I think that corporations must do their bit to improve working conditions or ensure that working conditions do not deteriorate. After all, employees are at the heart of corporations. </p> <p>Jeannette Weisschuh</p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The Cost of Cloud</h1> <p>christianverstraete — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:33:00 GMT</p> Does the cost of cloud computing limits the usability of a community cloud to support a supply chain? This is really the question I'd like to address today. Last April, McKinsey and last September, IDC have done an exercise of costing the difference between running applications in the cloud and in a datacenter. The McKinsey study has resulted in very strong reactions from bloggers, pointing out " McKinsey's Cloud Computing Report is Partly Clouded " to take one example. The IDC...(<a href="http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/manufacturing-distribution/archive/2009/11/13/the-cost-of-cloud.aspx">read more</a>) </article> <article> <h1>HP Offers up to 300 Consulting Hours for Insurance Companies Through HP Exstream Competitive Switch Program</h1> <p>tamiwebster — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:46:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Guest Blog Entry from </span><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Scott Draeger, HP Exstream product manager. </span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;"><em>Scott joined the digital document industry in 1997, after earning a BA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has more than 10 years of experience in the document composition software industry as both a transactional document designer, service provider and a software vendor. He earned his EDP certification from Xplor and his MBA in 2007 from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management...</em></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Last night as I sat at my desk working later than usual, I couldn’t help but notice the sun has already begun to set much earlier than it did even a couple of weeks ago. And that got me to thinking about the down side to “sunsets.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Now don’t get me wrong, I love sunsets as much as the next person. But if we’re being honest, sunsets aren’t always good thing. Case in point, working in the technology industry I’ve seen plenty of mergers and acquisitions which have left countless solutions and services “sunset” – meaning the newly formed company would no longer support or invest in these products/services. In fact, you may have heard that a number of technology companies have recently announced the discontinuation of several widely-used document automation solutions, which poses a major issue for businesses in the insurance, banking, and public sector industries, among others, who rely on these solutions to decrease costs, improve productivity and enhance customer responsiveness. In today’s volatile marketplace, the value of digital documents for on-demand access and quick delivery of relevant, customized communications has never been more crucial. Now as a point of practice and in the interest of the existing customer base, many of these software vendors will offer an “upgrade” path to another solution after sunsetting a product – but is it a good idea to take it?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">A former colleague of mine recently moderated a very informative podcast on the subject of “sunsetting” lead by a couple of industry-leading document composition experts who provided great insight into what companies can/should do in the face of product “sunsetting.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Among some of their recommendations:</span></p> <p class="ListParagraphCxSpFirst"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Use this as an opportunity to evaluate what else is on the market.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">After all, if a solution/service is being sunset, then it probably means there are other solutions with more robust capabilities –just don’t assume the upgrade your vendor is touting is the best one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></p> <p class="ListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">Take time to perform due diligence and see what other offerings are available. </span></i><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>It’s important not only to evaluate functionality, but also look for a solution that can consolidate disparate systems and establishes a solid enterprise platform for your future business needs.</span></p> <p class="ListParagraphCxSpLast"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;">·<span style="font:7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Look for a technology partner who is reliable and committed to continued innovation</span></i><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;"> – that’s the only way to know you won’t find yourself in the same situation later down the road.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial;">So if you’ve been informed that the sun will soon go down on your beloved solution, do not fret – help is just a click away.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>You can hear the podcast in its entirety at <a href="http://www.hp.com/go/exstreamfreedom">www.hp.com/go/exstreamfreedom</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>And here’s hoping you emerge from the darkness to face a brighter day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:small;font-family:Calibri;"> </span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> </main></body></html>