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Intel Keeps On Keeping On
By Jim Balderston
Intel hosted its Developer Forum this week and spent
much of the time discussing details of its Banias mobile processor, due out
later this year. Banias represents a new processor architecture that Intel
claims will provide extended battery life, solid performance, smaller form factors,
and easier wireless connectivity. The Banias architecture will provide for
higher performance and lower battery use by means of Advanced Branch Prediction,
Micro Op Fusion, a Power Optimized Processor System Bus, and a Dedicated
Stack Manager. Advanced Branch Prediction analyzes an application’s past
behavior and predicts likely requests in the future, enhancing performance.
Micro-OP Fusion merges several simultaneous operations into a single
operation. Power Optimized Processor System Bus manages power use by
providing power only to the circuits in use. The Dedicated Stack manager
allows the processor to execute instructions without interruption. The Banias
chipset offers dual band wireless LAN connectivity on either 802.11 a or b at connection speeds of 54Mbps and 11Mbps
respectively. Intel also offers its PROSet utility software which will allow
a user to connect from a wired connection to a WLAN without shutting down
applications.
It seems that every quarter Intel rolls out a new
chipset that is faster or cheaper or more efficient or all of the above.
Intel says its power management technology will extend battery life by nearly
an hour. This will likely be more than a “nice to have” feature as portable
computing equipment continues to be a brightish light in the otherwise
lackluster world of client computing. We expect Intel and their perennial
competitors to continue working on extending the usability of the AC-free
computing world. Good stuff, and could I have some more, please?
Meanwhile, Intel seems clearly intent on pushing
forward the wireless environment by sticking to a very clear strategy vis-à-vis
the myriad assortment of connectivity options presently struggling to gain most
favored nation status within the enterprise and SOHO computing environments.
Intel revealed this strategy with the recent announcement of PCI Express for
server computing where its promise to meet the demands of 1394b, USB 2.0,
InfiniBand Architecture and Ethernet connectivity options puts it above the
regional conflicts of the technologically religious. So it is here with the Banias chip,
which promises to make WLAN essentially a plug-and-play operation, regardless
of which religion a home or enterprise user chooses. Intel has essentially
minimized the risks of being caught by market zigs or zags as a result of the
momentum — or loss thereof — of any given standard in the still murky world
of wireless connectivity. By taking a secular approach to the wireless
environment, the company hopes to drive wireless networking further into the
market. WLAN managers will not find themselves bound to specific product or
standards, nor will they face wholesale conversion to one faith or another,
as their computing environment inevitably morphs with the latest and greatest
product releases. It looks like what’s good for General Intel, may, in fact,
turn out to be good for the rest of us as well.
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EMC Announces New Centera
Partners/Solutions
By Charles King
EMC and a number of its partners have announced new
and continuing support for the company’s Centera content addressed storage
(CAS) solution. Since the introduction of Centera four months ago, EMC has
inked over fifty partner agreements, including twenty Centera-integrated
applications, twenty new integration partners, and seven new resellers.
Centera-integrated solutions cover a range of areas including medical
imaging, document imaging and management, content management, email
archiving, biotech content management, check imaging, and video archiving.
Current solutions available for Centera include Connected’s TLM, Documentum’s
ECM Platform, Hypertrust’s Secure Archiving, LEGATO’s Xtender Solutions, and
TOWER Technology’s Tower IDM and WebCapture. In addition, twenty new partners
including CyberArc, Princeton Softech, TrueArc, and Unisys have committed to
or completed integration with Centera.
Beyond the genial mutual backslapping that is
typical of success story press releases, the Centera partner announcement
includes a number of issues we believe warrant further comment. The ongoing
explosion of data acquisition by businesses of every kind and size would seem
to have assured the success of document and content management solutions. But
historically, the sheer complexity and cost of solutions based on unwieldy
file systems and sometimes proprietary databases have significantly slowed
their ability to gain traction, even in markets and among customers who could
benefit from them. What has EMC added to the mix with the Centera CAS solution?
First, by developing Centera on an industry standard platform that uses
low-cost ATA drives, Ethernet connectivity, and TCP/IP protocols, EMC is
enabling their partners to create enterprise-class solutions at dramatically
lower price/performance points compared to traditional systems designed
around traditional transaction-focused storage systems. Additionally, EMC
claims that Centera’s automated self-managing/self-healing software features
offer customers long-term savings in systems management and maintenance
costs. What this means practically is that powerful Centera-integrated
solutions will likely be affordable to the customers who need them the most,
which should drive sales both for EMC and its myriad Centera partners. In
particular, we note the enhanced value this approach provides in the area of
document and transaction management. While historically much of this content
was often treated as archival in nature, the value of and demand for up to
date, non-reputable transaction records and associated documents should not
be discounted.
Sounds great for everyone, right? Well, maybe not.
For traditional storage tape vendors we believe that the availability of
robust IDE/ATA-enabled solutions such as Centera could further erode the
demand for tape media, and eventually relegate it to a dwindling number of
archival functions. The notable exceptions to this would be to only the very
lowest end of the market or legacy environments where the specific use of
tape is considered a business critical or strategic function. But in all
likelihood, we believe the use of tape archival functions will increasingly
be driven by governmental regulations, at least until such time that
regulators decide that tape backup need no longer be legally mandated.
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HP Goes Direct… To Where?
By Jim Balderston
HP has announced the availability of its new
technology catalogue and its intent to sell directly to SMBs. HP plans to
mail 2 million of the printed catalogues out to target businesses. It will be
published quarterly. The catalogue will include the following HP offerings:
desktop PCs and workstations, Compaq Evo notebooks, HP iPAQ Pocket PCs,
wireless networking solutions, printing and imaging technologies, projectors,
HP ProLiant servers, storage, software, and peripherals, as well as security
technologies. The catalogue features easy-to read print and order
instructions on every page. Customers can purchase goods displayed in the
catalogue through resellers, the Web, or a toll-free number.
Times are clearly tough in the PC market. HP’s
decision to offer its wares directly to the public through its catalogue
echoes Dell’s recent decision to offer its products on shelf space — a
departure from its order-on-the-Web mainstay. While we believe that efforts
to reach down market to the hordes of small and medium businesses operating
in the U.S. is conceptually correct, this move is not without its risks.
Several years ago, Compaq — now of course part of HP — tried a similar move,
selling its goods on the Web, and found it had stepped into a deep pile of
channel conflict. Will HP step in a similar fashion? Possibly, and HP could
get caught on the short end of a revenue
stream that shrinks due to lower unit sales despite higher potential margins.
That being said, HP must be gambling that many VARs are going to stay put,
since their options for hardware are slimmer in the wake of the Compaq
acquisition. But risks remain with consumer channels like Staples, Office Max,
WalMart, and Radio Shack, who may fear their unit sales would drop due to
direct competition from their supplier. In a slow economy, maybe it makes
sense to try and pull in sales and hold the margin, but we can’t help but
wonder what happens when sales of computer technology begins picking up. Will
HP capture all of those future sales directly? Or will a diminished channel
cost them in the long run? Finally, we are left scratching our head a bit
over the idea of using fixed print media in a highly volatile market. While
such a strategy worked well for Sears & Roebuck in days of yore, we
wonder if this less than state of the art information delivery mechanism
hints at a “me-too” — and perhaps not well thought out — strategy for
reaching SMBs. Chasing your competitor’s marketing rarely creates true
differentiation and often triggers the unwritten law of unintended consequences.
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Pew Project Issues September 11 and the Internet Report
By Charles King
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has issued
a new report concerning how the 9/11 terrorist attacks have affected the
behavior of Internet users. One Year
Later: September 11 and the Internet was based on telephone interviews
conducted between June 26 and July 26, 2002, among a sample of 2,501 adults
18 and older. Among other findings, the report found that 69% of Americans
believe the government should be granted wide privileges in deciding what
information should be posted on or removed from government agency Web sites,
and slightly smaller numbers (55-60%) supported the removal of Web information
the government believes could aid terrorists. However, while Internet users
were willing to support such government intervention, only 41% actually
believe removing Web site information will hinder terrorists. Additionally,
the public is sharply divided over government monitoring of people’s email
and Web activities, with 47% opposing such monitoring and 45% supporting it.
The Pew survey also found that the attack had also inspired changes in
people’s online behavior. About 19 million Americans rekindled relationships
after 9/11 by sending email to family members, friends, former colleagues,
and other individuals they had not contacted in years, and fully 83% had
maintained those relationships during the past year. About 11% of Americans
feel their lives are still far from normal since the events of 9/11, and half
of that group uses the Internet. Notably, this group is more willing than
other users to support government removal or withhold information from the
Internet, and also said they have increased their use of email due to the
attacks.
As is the case with most surveys, this new report is
notable more for the apparent behavioral anomalies it reveals than what one
might expect. It is not especially surprising that about two-thirds of
Internet users support government efforts to crack down on material deemed to
be useful to terrorist activities, since the number is roughly analogous to
those who generally support anti-terrorist efforts. However, we find the
disparity between the numbers of those who support such efforts and those who
believe they will actually be useful to be notable. While there was a good
deal of initial government posturing and yammering shortly after 9/11 about
how terrorists used the Internet to their advantage, such talk has quieted a
good deal in the months since, suggesting that evidence supporting those
original claims may have been thinner than was supposed. Is this the source
of Internet users’ skepticism concerning the efficacy of government
intervention in Web site content? Perhaps. While we are fully cognizant of
the government’s role in maintaining the safety of the populace, color-coded
alerts and the obvious relish some politicians take in their terror-busting
roles suggest that any number of bureaucrats might profit from a re-reading
of “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
We were also interested to note the role the
Internet played in helping people to reinitiate and maintain contact with
family, friends, and colleagues they had lost touch with. While the Internet
has spawned and been burdened with more than its fair share of hype over the
past half decade, we have long argued that its eventual success could be best
measured by its essential transparency. That nearly 19 million Internet users
turned to the Internet as a means to rekindle relationships suggests to us
that transparency is fast arriving for growing numbers of Americans, and
could well mark a new phase in the evolution of the Internet, its use, and
its usefulness.
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