International News

16.04.2004

America: EMC introduces Clariion disk library

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service/San Francisco

EMC Corp announced a new line of storage arrays designed to let customers replace tape-based backup systems with faster disk-based devices.

The new line, called the Clariion Disk Library (DL), will initially be comprised of the Clariion DL700 and DL300 disk libraries, which are based on EMC's Clariion CX700 and CX300 ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) arrays.

Unlike the CX line, the DL arrays will come pre-configured with a server called a "tape library module" that will make the disk array appear as if it were a tape library, said Sean Kinney, a senior marketing manager with EMC. The module will emulate a number of existing tape devices, including Advanced Digital Information Corp.'s Scalar devices and Storage Technology Corp.'s L-series and 9700 series tape libraries.

"A lot of people are interested in backing up to disk to make their tape backups go faster and better, but they don't want to change their libraries at all," said Kinney. Tape-based backup software will interact with the DL as if it were a tape device, but backup and recovery times will be significantly faster, he said. "Backup performance is roughly 30 to 50 percent faster than the tape library," according to Kinney, and recovery speeds will be "at least 10 times faster." "In the disk library, all the recovery data is sitting on disk. It's as if you copied from your C drive to your D drive," Kinney said.

Other vendors such as Quantum Corp. and Sepaton Inc. sell similar products, but with Monday's announcement, EMC becomes the largest company to sell these kinds of tape emulation devices, said Tony Asaro, a senior analyst with Enterprise Storage Group Inc., an industry research firm. "They're the first major storage vendor to provide something like this," he said. "They've basically legitimized this as a solution."

Asaro's research has found that about half of IT managers expect to move all of their short-term backup to disk over the next few years. Products like the Clarion DL series will not necessarily replace tape libraries, but they will appeal to companies looking to speed up recovery times on some of this short-term data, he said.

The DL series appliances will begin shipping April 12, with a 500G-byte DL300 starting at US$109,000. The DL700 starts at $241,000, with a 32T-byte configuration listing for $450,000, according to EMC. Customers will be able to purchase 3.7T-byte data modules for the devices for $41,500, the company said.

The DL series will work with IBM Corp.'s Tivoli Storage Manager, Legato Systems Inc.'s NetWorker, and Veritas Software Corp.'s NetBackup and Backup Exec backup software, and EMC is planning eventually to support a number of other backup products, the company said.

America: Sharp ships Linux-based PDA for enterprises

Agam Shah, IDG News Service/San Francisco

A Linux-based handheld supporting enterprise applications and databases started shipping from Sharp Corp., the company said.

The Zaurus SL-6000 is targeted mainly at corporate customers, said Deanna Davis, a Sharp spokeswoman. "It is designed be an enterprise piece as opposed to a PDA (personal digital assistant) that anyone would buy," she said.

The PDA is powered by an Intel Corp. XScale 400Mhz processor, with 64M bytes of SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), 64M bytes of flash memory and a lithium-polymer battery. It has a VGA (video graphics array) screen and an integrated speaker and microphone to record and play back conversations.

It has a built-in QWERTY thumb keyboard that can be protected by a sliding control panel. The PDA can withstand a one-meter drop, the company said. The device supports Java, which is important for business application use, Davis said. It also supports IBM Corp.'s WebSphere application server, she said. IBM and Sharp are working together to sell the product through the companies' respective channels, she said.

The US$699 SL-6000 has built-in 802.11b Wi-Fi networking and Compact Flash and SD/MMC (Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard) card slots.

America: Microsoft Office 2004 to ship in May

Jim Dalrymple, MacCentral.com, San Francisco

Microsoft Corp.'s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) announced that Office 2004 for Mac will ship the third week of May.

Mac users can preorder Office from several online retailers. Analysts feel that the contribution that Office makes to the Macintosh platform cannot be underestimated in Apple's push for more customers.

In an interview with MacCentral, Jessica Sommer, Product Manager for MacBU, said that the code for Office 2004 would be released to manufacturing on April 14, 2004. In the next few weeks, six localized versions of Office 2004 for Mac will be released to manufacturers: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. Users interested in preordering Office 2004 can do so at The Apple Store online, MacConnection, MacMall and MacZone.

"Customer feedback on early versions of Office 2004 for Mac has been overwhelmingly positive; we are really excited to get it out the door and into the hands of our customers," said Roz Ho, general manager for the Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) at Microsoft Corp. "The entire Mac BU has been working hard through research, development and testing to build a new version of Office for Mac that meets our customers' evolving needs. I couldn't be more proud of the talented team of Mac users in the Mac BU."

According to Jupiter Research, 11 percent of businesses with $50 million revenue or greater, report running Office v. X, while another 8 percent plan Office 2004 upgrades this year. "Without Mac Office, Apple would have a harder time selling systems to companies where the productivity suite is essential; considering Macs are often run in shops where Windows dominates, cross-platform availability is a major consideration," Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at Jupiter Research, told MacCentral. "About 90 percent of business users run Office, so the Mac version is a must-have product in Apple's catalog. Apple and Microsoft have been friends and rivals since the companies first began. Over the years, features and the look and feel of products tend to be similar after application revisions, and as Wilcox points out, even Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system has some familiar features.

"People forget that Microsoft's early application success was on the Macintosh first, with Excel and Word, long before Windows," said Wilcox. "No operating system is successful without good applications, so, from that perspective Apple owes much to Microsoft. Over the years, Microsoft has taken many cues from Apple, starting with the graphical user interface adopted for Windows. Apple's mark is on forthcoming products, too - a number of Longhorn's publicly showcased features bear striking resemblance to Mac OS X."

Microsoft also released the second part of its Flash demo series outlining some of the new features users can expect to see in Office 2004. Features in the latest demo series include:

- Charting improvements in Excel 2004: New charting tools make quantum leaps in helping create amazing charts and graphs.

- Smart buttons in Word and Excel 2004: Smart buttons give unprecedented control over powerful automatic functions in Word or Excel documents.

- New design templates, animations and transitions in PowerPoint 2004: Office 2004 features more than 100 brand-new design templates and new, smoother transitions and animations.

- Save as Picture in Office: This feature allows users to save objects drawn in Office as separate graphics files.

- Soft Shadows in Office: New, fully adjustable Soft Shadows add a measure of elegance to every document.

Microsoft released the first Flash demo series on March 16, 2004 where they looked at Presenter Tools in PowerPoint; Three Column View in Entourage; Junk E-mail Protection in Entourage; and Archiving in Entourage.

Europe: From Finland, with love

Christopher Lindquist, CIO.com

Finland isn't like the U.S. For starters, a good chunk of it lies above the arctic circle. And its population barely tops five million. But it is a land of technology users (more than three quarters of the population reportedly have cell phones)-and technology vendors.

Fourteen of those vendors came stateside last week to gain some insight into selling their products in the US. The group of corporate leaders met with the press, was introduced to potential partners and customers, and had a chance to polish their sales pitches to U.S. audiences. And some of them have some interesting products to pitch.

Oy Fountain Park Ltd., for instance, showed me a tool for helping corporations make decisions. The Strategy Signals Toolset collects "signals" or indicators of possible future events or actions from key employees around a company. Employees then prioritize these signals inside a Web-based, drag-and-drop application. The collected information then goes to management who can use it for decision making in areas such as product development. It demos better than it goes down in text, so check out the online demo.

Visualway Design Oy, meanwhile, told me about their "virtual browser" that essentially drops a 100 percent standards compliant browser inside the existing Web browser on any machine under a variety of operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Pocket PC). The goal is to let Web developers know exactly what standards they can write to, regardless of the software a user might have on his or her machine, without the need for plug-ins or other downloads. But if they want to crack the US market, they're going to need more English on their Web site.

Other members of the group included Fitware Oy, which creates health monitoring tools, Codenomicon Ltd., which provides tools to help software developers identify security flaws before a product ships, and Capricode, which offers wireless device management tools.

In all, it showed that Finland isn't afraid of a little innovation. And while none of the vendors may become the next Nokia Oyj, at least a few may have a shot of making some sales in the States.

For more information about the program and a full list of participants, visit the Global Software web site at http://oyt.oulu.fi/globalsoftware/html/participants.html.

Europe: Wacom chops price of Intuos2 tablet

Macworld.co.uk staff, Macworld.co.uk, London

Wacom Europe, a division of Wacom Technology Corp., has reduced the price of its Intuos2 Graphics Tablet System range.

Wacom product manager Guido Möller said: "Due to the huge success of the Intuos2 range across Europe, we are able to pass on a substantial price decrease to our customers. We also believe that it will make the range more accessible to a broader market, and indeed attract a new customer base."

The range consists of five tablet sizes from A6 up to A3, as well as including multiple input devices. The price reduction will equate to up to £60 (US$110) off certain products.

The Intuos 2 range features cordless and battery free input devices - pens, airbrush, mice and cursors. The pens and airbrush are pressure sensitive, "providing a more natural and intuitive feel," according to Wacom.

Prices start at £264 for the 6-x-8-inch Intuos2 A5 and flag-ship product - the 12-x-18-inch Intuos2 A3 is £621. Both prices include VAT.

Asia and Pacific: NEC, Fujitsu disclose new chip plant plans

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service/Tokyo

NEC Electronics Corp. plans to build a semiconductor manufacturing line at a plant it owns in northern Japan, the Tokyo company said.

The new line represents an investment of around ¥5 billion (US$48 million). Construction will begin in May and is scheduled to be completed in December, the company said in a statement. The line will be housed in a new building to be built alongside another chip production line currently under construction at its facility in Yamagata. The latter plant, construction of which began in late 2003, is expected to have a monthly production capacity of 4,000 wafers when complete, while the plant announced will be able to handle around 10,000 wafers per month. Both will handle 300-millimeter diameter wafers and use a 90-nanometer process technology. NEC Electronics was spun off from NEC Corp. last year and is a specialist manufacturer of system LSIs (large scale integrated circuits).

Such chips are designed to handle a specific job, such as control of a television or digital still camera, and typically bring together the functions of several standard chips onto a single custom chip. NEC's announcement comes two weeks after Fujitsu Ltd. announced plans for a new semiconductor plant at its facility in Mie prefecture in central Japan.

The Fujitsu plant is scheduled to enter commercial production in April next year and mass production in September 2005. It will also handle 300-millimeter diameter wafers and initially use a 90-nanometer production technology. Fujitsu also has plans to introduce a more advanced 65-nanometer technology at the plant and says monthly capacity will be 13,000 wafers at full capacity. The Tokyo company expects to invest a total of ¥160 billion in the new plant.

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