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New Emotional Technology in KODAK Picture Kiosks creates opportunity to tap into trillions of images
New KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 Unlocks Images from Consumer Video, Social Networks and More
The Eastman Kodak Company introduced a series of powerful new features and enhancements to its KODAK Picture Kiosk software, including a number of industry firsts. The new features are designed to inspire consumers to create something truly memorable with their most important photos easily and in minutes, through highly-profitable premium at-retail photo products. Utilizing Kodak’s proprietary materials and digital image science, these unique-to-Kodak features are compatible with KODAK Picture Kiosk G4 series – the majority of the KODAK Kiosk fleet.
Hot on the heels of the award winning KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera and KODAK PLAYSPORT Video Camera announced at CES, KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 now debuts Kodak’s Video Snapshots, a first-of-its-kind video-to-still capture application at retail that allows consumers to easily select individual pictures of that “perfect moment” from video clips shot with digital still and point-and-shoot digital video cameras. Other industry firsts include Kodak’s Pet Eye Retouch, Kodak’s Facial Retouch and true one-touch premium products. In addition, onboard workflow enhancements in KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 make it faster and easier than ever to create popular premium products such as photo enlargements and collages, as well as KODAK Picture CDs, and Photo Books, making this Kodak’s most powerful software release for its kiosk fleet – ever.
“Our new KODAK Picture Kiosk software is the best we’ve introduced. It uses our Emotional Technology Initiative, designed specifically to help consumers tell their life stories quickly and easily,” said Nicoletta Zongrone, General Manager Retail Systems Solutions and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company. “We’ve had a number of market firsts since Kodak invented the photo kiosk category in 1993, and we’ve now created what we believe is the most satisfying customer experience to date, along with introducing proprietary features, that help our retail partners create vibrant, reliable and highly profitable photo retail destinations.”
New features of KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 solve real problems for consumers and retailers:
– Solving the problem of capturing that special individual moment locked away in a video, Kodak’s Video Snapshots feature lets consumers review and select individual frames from their video files, convert them into still images, and then use them to create prints, collages, greeting cards, photo books and calendars, or store them on a CD making them easier to share and relive. Consistent with Kodak’s core competency of delivering breakthrough, easy-to-use consumer experiences, the simple and elegant user interface is quick, easy and fun. Kodak’s Video Snapshots will support video formats of top brand digital still and point-and- shoot digital video cameras, including the newest HD models. With consumers in the US alone shooting more than 4 trillion video frames annually, this presents an enormous opportunity for retailers.(1)
– With 71 million pet households in the US alone(2), pets rank in the top four of all captured images.(3) Kodak’s Pet Eye Retouch allows these consumers to fix the very common and problematic pet eye glare caused by flash photography of their furry companions. Consumer research shows that 65 percent of consumers were likely to use this feature, and remarkably, 28 percent would be willing to change where they print to get it. (3)
– Helping people look their best, Kodak’s market-proven Facial Retouch Feature, at the touch of one button smoothes wrinkles, diminishes and/or erases blemishes and improves skin tone for more perfect photo keepsakes. This technology was successfully tested and launched with major European retailers and is now available to all Kodak retail partners around the globe.
– The new Software v4.0 also gives consumers using the KODAK Picture Kiosk the ability to access the photos they have stored or shared on the KODAK Gallery, Facebook® and Picasa(TM) Web Albums, and easily use them to create photo keepsakes in minutes right in the store. With more than 475M active consumers in 180 countries and more than three billion photos uploaded each month to these sites, the software offers retailers a huge opportunity to market their unique in-store services to these users.(4)
– Designed to help consumers become aware of the powerful new sharing solutions, and retailers to increase market basket opportunity, the new software now offers a complete suite of merchandising tools. Fresh, lively welcome screen messaging offers ideas for new projects right from the start, and the intelligent one-touch premium upsell feature creates animated product suggestions using the consumer’s own images, allowing her to purchase an additional product instantly with the touch of one button.
In addition to exciting new features, KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 takes work out for the consumer. Consistent with Kodak’s focus on delivering a superior consumer experience in store, the new software requires fewer consumer touches, writes KODAK Picture CDs up to 33 percent faster, and creates KODAK Photo Books faster and more easily than with previous generation solutions. This translates into less queuing, improved customer satisfaction and more profit potential per minute.
“With all these amazing new features and powerful upsells, the KODAK Picture Kiosk is the hardest working employee in the store – always helping and always selling,” said Zongrone. “In the end, this category is not about bits, bytes and pages, it’s about putting technology to work to solve real problems and create opportunities, so that consumers and retailers get what they need. We call it ‘Emotional Technology.’ We’re very proud of our new software and we’re working with our retailer partners around the globe to roll it out as we speak.”
KODAK Picture Kiosk Software v4.0 will begin shipping in the 2nd quarter of 2010. . For more information on this and other exciting solutions come visit the world’s leader in the photo kiosk industry at PMA 2010 – booth 3100, Anaheim Convention Center, California, from February 21-23 2010.
Tableau launches free software to make data social
New product helps blogs and web sites start conversations with interactive visual data
Tableau Software launched a new product that brings public data to life on the web. Tableau Public, available for free, lets anyone who posts content to the web easily create interactive visualizations and publish them to blogs, web sites, Twitter feeds or anywhere online. Instead of viewing static charts or tables, Tableau Public lets people answer questions and share data interactively on the web.
“Imagine if online data was as fun and accessible as online video,” said Christian Chabot, Tableau’s CEO and co-founder. “We created this product because we want to make data a first class citizen on the web. We want to change the way people interact with data online by letting them tell stories with flexibility and beauty.”
Current alternatives for sharing data online are clumsy. Typically, data is pasted into tables and lists, or posted as files or catalogs that are difficult to use. Available at TableauPublic.com, Tableau Public is helping to solve this challenge – bringing data to life on the web for ordinary people. With its interactive visualizations and dashboards, Tableau Public helps people start conversations based on data that is useful, beautiful and shareable. No special plug-ins are required, all that’s needed to see and use the data is a web browser.
From bloggers and journalists to researchers and students, Tableau is already being used as a tool to create conversations with data. For example, Timothy Ellis at SeattleBubble.com, a community blog focused on the local housing market, is using Tableau to increase the depth of conversations about the changing real estate market.
Robert Kosara, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, recently used Tableau Public to compare temperature data collected from 343 weather stations over twenty years, or 77,172 observations. He was able to show warming trends clearly and posted a blog about global warming. “I was impressed how Tableau helped me create a more analytical visualization that was easy to share on the web. It’s an amazing product, and I regularly use Tableau for my Visual Analytics class,” said Professor Kosara.
Tableau Version 5.1
In conjunction with the general availability of Tableau Public, the company is also releasing today Version 5.1 of its Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server product suite. Version 5.1 provides more analytic richness, better publishing, and increased scalability and performance. Analytical features include reference bands that provide context to a user’s analysis, bullet charts to evaluate related data, and intelligent data labels to call out the most critical data. New publishing features include rich formatting, streamlined toolbar design, more filter options, and a flexible layout.
Source: www.tableaupublic.com
Apple releases Aperture 3
New Features Include Faces, Places & Brushes
Apple introduced Aperture 3, the next major release of its powerful photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto® ‘09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Stunning new slideshows let you share your work by weaving together photos, audio, text and HD video.
“Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets.”
“Aperture 3 gets it right,” said National Geographic photographer, Jim Richardson. “The image editing tools are exactly what I have been asking for, they’re so easy to use and give me a level of control that I never even thought possible.”
“I chose Aperture because it was the most powerful archiving application around, but it’s now an unbelievable imaging tool as well,” said Bill Frakes, Sports Illustrated staff photographer. “I am beyond impressed with the massive changes made in Aperture 3.”
Aperture 3 allows you to organize large photo libraries with even more flexibility using Projects and the new Faces and Places. Faces uses face detection and recognition to find and organize your photos by the people in them. You can view faces across your entire photo library or view just the faces that appear in selected projects. In a new view that speeds up the organization process, Aperture 3 displays faces that have been detected but haven’t yet been named. Places lets you explore your photos based on where they were taken, and like in iPhoto, Places automatically reverse geocodes GPS data into user-friendly locations. In Aperture 3, you can assign locations by dragging-and-dropping photos onto a map or by using location information from GPS enabled cameras, tracking devices or your iPhone® photos.
The new Brushes feature allows you to add professional touches to your photos by simply painting effects onto the image. Aperture 3 includes 15 Quick Brushes that perform the most popular tasks like Dodge, Burn, Polarize and Blur, without the complexity of layers or masks. Brushes can automatically detect edges in your images to let you apply or remove effects exactly where you want them. Aperture 3 includes dozens of Adjustment Presets that apply a specific style or look to the entire image with just a click. You can create your own custom presets or explore the techniques of other photographers by importing theirs.
Aperture 3 makes it easy to share your work with stunning slideshows that weave together photos, audio, text and HD video. You can select one of six Apple designed themes or choose your own transitions, background, borders and titles, and even add your own soundtrack. You can export your slideshows directly to iTunes® to take with you on your iPhone or iPod touch®. You can also share photographs as beautiful prints, create custom-designed hardcover books and publish to online photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, right from Aperture 3.
Pricing & Availability
Aperture 3 is available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) and existing Aperture users can upgrade for a suggested retail price of $99 (US). A downloadable 30-day trial version is available at www.apple.com/aperture/trial. Aperture 3 runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS® X Snow Leopard® on Macs with Intel Core 2 Duo processors.
Full system requirements, online tutorials and more information on Aperture 3 can be found at www.apple.com/aperture.
Microsoft study reveals small and midsize businesses using hosted services have better financial performance
Research suggests correlation between IT usage and business growth.
Microsoft released its global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010,(1) which investigates how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) across multiple segments fared during the recession and how they use technology. The research finds that businesses that value IT as an enabler for better business productivity and effectiveness and those that use hosted services performed better fiscally than those that do not.
IT Critical to Revenue Growth
Despite the global recession, more SMBs surveyed in 2010 reported an increase in revenue than in 2008. Those that reported growth view IT as critical to their business success.
– In the past 12 months, 52 percent of SMBs reported an increase in revenue, up from 39 percent in 2008.(2)
– Increasing 20 points since 2008, 55 percent of SMBs view IT as critical to their business.
– Of the SMBs that view IT as critical, 60 percent saw revenues grow over the past 12 months. In contrast, among SMBs that stated IT is not important, less than 29 percent saw revenue increase.(3)
SMBs Moving Toward Cloud Computing
The 2010 index indicates SMBs are beginning to see the benefits of cloud computing; more than 40 percent of the respondents that use hosted or cloud technology reported revenue rises of 30 percent or more compared with 90 percent of respondents not using hosted technology that saw decreases in revenue. The advantages of hosted or cloud technology are viewed as reduced cost and IT management and maintenance, as well as increased business value, productivity and competitiveness.
– Awareness of hosted services is increasing with 65 percent of SMBs using hosted software to some extent, while 73 percent of the remainder have considered it, compared with only 44 percent in the 2008 Index.
– SMBs are beginning to understand the value of “renting” IT as a service — 36 percent said a pay-as-you-go model would be attractive.
Cloud computing has become a watchword for the IT industry as software and services such as e-mail, Web sites and e-commerce are increasingly available in an on-premises, off-premises or hybrid model depending on business need.
“Over the last five years, we have seen nearly 40 percent growth in usage of hosted services,” said Michael Korbacher, director of EMEA Software plus Services in the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “Using pay-as-you-go cloud technologies, small and midsize businesses can now afford and easily have access to enterprise-class, secure services across any platform.”
Correlating Business Performance With Technology Usage
The findings from the research were concluded by analyst firm Freeform Dynamics Ltd., which independently assessed the SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010 to ascertain to what degree IT adoption is driving revenue growth specifically within the SMB community.
The SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010 commissioned by Microsoft researched 3,193 SMBs in a cross section of private industries in 15 countries. Overall, the findings show greater awareness of the benefits of IT among SMBs and a high reliance on IT across all industries and geographies. The findings indicate a clear path toward better financial performance than for those not currently taking advantage of IT advances such as hosted services.
“Our assessment of the report tells us that an increased focus on IT correlates with good performance in all of the size categories surveyed,” said Dale Vile, research director of Freeform Dynamics. “This whole picture corroborates the notion that technology and hosted services can provide tangible business advantage, even for smaller companies, and it’s not surprising to see that investment in IT and hosting goes hand in hand with good financial performance.”
Role of IT Within Business and Revenue Change
It’s critical to our business; we cannot work without it.
– 14.38 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 34.01 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 11.56 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 25.49 percent – No change in revenue
– 14.55 percent – Decrease in revenue
It’s very important for the majority of our activities.
– 8.86 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 28.32 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 8.65 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 40.16 percent – No change in revenue
– 14.01 percent – Decrease in revenue
It’s important but not essential to the running of the business.
– 8.21 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 18.48 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 8.21 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 46.33 percent – No change in revenue
– 18.77 percent – Decrease in revenue
It complements our business but is by no means essential.
– 7.41 percent – Revenue up more than 30 percent
– 13.89 percent – Revenue up 10 percent to 30 percent
– 7.41 percent – Revenue up less than 10 percent
– 42.59 percent – No change in revenue
– 28.70 percent – Decrease in revenue
The IT Services Outlined in the Research Are as Follows
E-mail
– 67 percent SMBs have on site
– 29 percent SMBs have hosted
– 4 percent SMBs don’t have
File sharing/collaboration
– 56 percent SMBs have on site
– 23 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have
Backup
– 71 percent SMBs have on site
– 22 percent SMBs have hosted
– 7 percent SMBs don’t have
CRM
– 52 percent SMBs have on site
– 31 percent SMBs have hosted
– 17 percent SMBs don’t have
Webconferencing
– 40 percent SMBs have on site
– 39 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have
Web site
– 49 percent SMBs have on site
– 39 percent SMBs have hosted
– 12 percent SMBs don’t have
Server
– 59 percent SMBs have on site
– 28 percent SMBs have hosted
– 13 percent SMBs don’t have
E-commerce
– 46 percent SMBs have on site
– 33 percent SMBs have hosted
– 21 percent SMBs don’t have
The Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2010 research report was executed by Vanson Bourne between November 2009 and January 2010. The research questioned 3,193 small and midsize businesses (up to 500 employees) across 15 countries worldwide: Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.
(1) 3,193 SMBs surveyed in France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, U.K., U.S., Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in a cross section of different industries. Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2010 available on request.
(2) Microsoft Small Business Technology Index 2008. Available on request.
(3) Table showing correlation between the role of IT within businesses and revenue change
Source: Microsoft Corp.
eScholar launches Version 7 of eScholar Uniq-ID for Students
New Capabilities Enhance Interstate Management of Student IDs
eScholar LLC, the leader in education data management software, has announced the release of Version 7 of the eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students. eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students is the nation’s most widely used product for assigning, maintaining, and managing lifelong unique student identifiers across time, location, and source.
“Even though our application is proven in the marketplace, we are always striving to improve the identifier assignment and management process so that the eScholar unique identifier can help improve longitudinal data analysis and can be used in new ways as business needs change,” said Andrea Hartman, Senior Product Manager at eScholar. “The new version of eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students does this by focusing on the capability to link all identifiers a student may have, including identifiers from other states, to one eScholar unique identifier. Providing a crosswalk of these identifiers assists the data integration process and builds upon our foundation that assigns identifiers uniquely across states to provide the only interstate capability available today.”
The key new features of eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students Version 7, which is available immediately, provide the following new capabilities:
– Ability to track all alternate student identifiers allows eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students system to retain a record of all local identifiers and/or alternate identifiers submitted to the system in one table.
– Ability to authorize data updates by source system to enable record-level updates based upon a system-wide source system reliability score. Administrators configure and define reliability scores for source systems that are authorized to upload data.
– Ability for administrators to configure automatic notifications which sends an email to the appropriate contacts when unresolved near matches exist for the specific location. This allows districts and states can more easily monitor pending near matches on an ongoing basis.
– Ability to identify potential false drop-outs, missing students and/or already existing identifiers.
“It is our expectation that the capabilities of Version 7, in particular the enhanced Batch Search component will enable us to significantly improve the way that we administer our student IDs,” said Kathy Gosa of the Kansas Department of Education. “The ability to quickly and easily match the IDS of students from other sources and other systems, such as Direct Certification for Free Lunch and students who have enrolled in postsecondary, will be a significant timesaver and will result in higher quality data.”
“eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students and eScholar Uniq-ID® for Staff are critical components of our long term vision to provide the most comprehensive longitudinal data systems solutions,” said Shawn Bay, eScholar’s founder and CEO. “Having the ability to maintain lifelong identities for every individual throughout their education spanning early childhood, preschool, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, elementary, secondary, postsecondary, adult education, and the work force levels is essential. This dramatically enhances the ability of local, state and federal education agencies to understand the impact of educational programs and services on individuals throughout their lives.”
Organizations can learn more about Version 7 of the eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students by visiting www.escholar.com.
IBM introduces new software to accelerate workload movement to System z
IBM announced 10 new software products to help companies lower application management costs by optimizing the System z mainframe for more workloads, such as data analytics, collaborative application development, application maintenance and other key business processes.
Given System z’s ability to reduce costs through server consolidation, IBM and the industry have aggressively extended the breadth of new workloads for the mainframe via 3,800 z/OS-based and 3,000 Linux-based applications. The unique ability of the mainframe to host many application services on one system has helped System z achieve one of the industry’s lowest application costs per user. Minimal application costs are important for companies which rely on multiple applications to run their business.
The new products span IBM’s software portfolio to provide a range of benefits for System z customers. The benefits include optimal application connectivity, productivity, security and data management.
The new offerings complement IBM’s recent announcement of seven integrated hardware, software and services packages — IBM System z Solution Editions — to help customers deploy new enterprise workloads, such as data warehousing, electronic payments and disaster recovery.
The new products include:
– IMS 11 provides direct SQL access to IMS data from any distributed platform. This simplifies and speeds the process of connecting applications and data, while also enabling easier data replication and change capture processes. Enhanced Java support expands the number of developers available to support IMS applications and business services.
– New products from WebSphere to enhance business process management, connectivity and integration including: WebSphere Process Server for z/OS V7, IBM WebSphere ILOG Business Rule Management Systems, WebSphere MQ for z/OS V7.0.1, WebSphere Message Broker for z/OS V7.0, and IBM Problem Determination Tools V10. These products are designed to help clients discover insights that enable innovation, maximize the value of business interactions, and optimize productivity and resources. For a full list and description of the new WebSphere products visit: www.ibm.com/smartwork/businessagility
To help clients cut application maintenance costs, IBM offers:
– IBM Rational Developer for System z version 7.6 provides a modern GUI development environment, to increase developer productivity and lower the costs associated with maintaining and building multi-platform applications. The new offering helps attract next-generation workers, consolidates multi-language development into a single environment and dramatically reduces CPU usage of up to 50 percent, minimizing budget
expenditures.
– IBM Rational Team Concert for System z version 2.0 uses a new common repository to help teams to work together, share assets, automate processes and deliver software faster. The software expedites response times and cuts costs by consolidating disparate development team infrastructures and automating software development across multiple platforms, which is important for tiered applications.
– An enhanced set of IBM Rational Compilers for C/C++, COBOL and PL/I reduce application MIP requirements, while increasing developer productivity and reducing both capital expense and overall development costs.
To help clients gain better insights about enterprise assets and lower network management costs, IBM offers:
– Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS removes unused and obsolete software and helps determine software usage to plan effectively for the future and to run smarter systems.
– IBM Tivoli NetView for z/OS 5.4 improves network and automation control for data centers and change management. It provides an understanding of how network availability and events impact the business, helping customers deliver smarter, more automated systems.
– IBM Tivoli zSecure provides a mainframe security solution for automated analysis and reporting of mainframe events and compliance dashboards that lower auditing costs helping companies run a smarter more cost effective system.
Telcordia, Sodifrance and HVB Unicredit are among the companies worldwide already benefiting from the long-term economics of the System z platform.
“Telcordia’s data systems are designed to provide consistently high throughput all the time. Each system averages five million transactions per day, supporting an average of 250 gigabytes of active data,” said Paul Gandolfo, a senior technical specialist in application development and performance at Telcordia. “Our customers bet their businesses on the services we provide, and we bet our service performance and reliability on IBM’s Information Management System. Downtime is not an option.”
“Building an agile development team requires a multiplatform approach and Sodifrance uses Rational Developer for System z and Rational Team Concert for System z to help application teams synchronize their efforts and improve collaboration,” said Hugh Smith, project manager of Sodifrance. “Rational on System z offers a powerful and valuable combination for any company that wants to boost its development team’s productivity.”
“Programmers that are using Rational Developer for System z have found that development is more comfortable than with our existing set of development tools,” says Almut Geiger of HVB Unicredit. “Debugging in particular is much faster. Features like syntax checking, content assist, multiple views and error identification make development easier. For example, when there were coding errors before, a developer had to find the correct line number in the code and then try to determine what was wrong with the code. Now they just click on an icon, and they are led directly to the position of the error. It takes people some time to get familiar with a new environment, but when they become familiar with Rational Developer for System z, we are seeing an estimated 15 percent increase in development efficiency and a 10 percent increase in testing efficiency.”
System z, visit http://www.ibm.com/mainframe
System z software, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz
Source: IBM
IBM announces new software for managing data centers
IBM introduced ground-breaking new software for managing data centers. The new technology has the potential to dramatically cut the cost of operations while speeding the deployment of new applications from weeks to minutes.
The introduction of IBM’s new VMControl product for enterprises, combined with IBM Tivoli software, gives businesses for the first time a single point of control across multiple types of IT systems and virtualization technologies. It spans UNIX/Linux, mainframe, x86 and storage systems and networks.
VMControl helps companies that have turned to virtualization – the creation of multiple virtual servers or storage on a single physical system – to reduce infrastructure costs, but have encountered new struggles as they try to manage enterprises made up of disparate platforms, each with their own virtualization technology.
VMControl allows combinations of physical and virtual IBM servers to be managed as a single entity. This approach – known as system pooling – expands the benefits of virtualization by helping corporate data centers simplify complex management functions and better share and prioritize use of critical resources such as processing power, memory and storage.
Centralizing control of virtualized environments brings new intelligence to data center operations. Companies can manage their vast pools of information and processing resources and parcel them out to applications when and where they’re needed. This breakthrough capability not only increases the overall capacity utilization of the IT infrastructure to lower capital, operational and energy costs, and improves application availability, but gives IT managers the flexibility to adapt to new demands being prompted by the surge of data from internet-connected devices.
VMControl will also accelerate the deployment of new IT delivery models, like cloud computing, which allows information and processing resources to be tapped from afar.
“IBM has provided Winn-Dixie with many innovative solutions to help us increase productivity, maximize our resources and save money for more than 15 years,” said Charlie Weston, Group Vice President, Information Technology for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based grocer. “We are extremely confident that the launch of the VMControl product will be equally as successful for IBM’s customers.”
The new product, together with IBM Tivoli software, helps companies address and improve service and reduce cost and risk. IBM today announced a new version of Tivoli Provisioning Manager that provides enhanced automation of the manual tasks of provisioning and configuring servers, operating systems, middleware, software applications, storage and network devices.
Whether businesses are moving to the cloud or looking to deliver IT within the data center as cloud services, the sheer scale and velocity of data growth as well as the now-permanent reality of having to do more with less make VMControl essential for data centers. The combination of VMControl and Tivoli offers several benefits, such as:
Faster response to business needs: A reduction in the skills, tools and tasks required to deploy new workloads. With VMControl, companies can offer rapid deployments of new workloads (from weeks to minutes) while maintaining control over IT resources. Businesses can adapt to changing business needs and support new and diverse types of workloads in accordance with service-level agreements.
More efficient use of resources: To configure, operate and monitor physical and virtualized resources across multiple IBM hardware platforms would otherwise require as many as dozens of different management techniques. Buying, building and maintaining disparate management tools take up significant portions of IT budgets. VMControl reduces the management tools to one, cutting costs of operations.
Awareness, consistency and predictability of operations: Business can monitor, maintain and adjust the service levels required by each computing workload handled by the pool of IT resources. It also can help predict and react to system problems. By moving workloads away from failing systems, VMControl can ensure workloads maintain application availability and avoid unplanned down time.
Enabling Smarter Systems: VMControl’s ability to dynamically move workloads and make adjustments allow IBM systems to be more effectively utilized, use less power and cooling and provide a much more resilient infrastructure.
The new product — IBM® Systems Director VMControl(TM) Enterprise Edition — supports IBM’s PowerVM and z/VM as well as x86 virtualization technologies such as VMWare, Hyper-V and open x86 virtualization solutions. VMControl Enterprise Edition will be available on IBM Power Systems running AIX in December, 2009. Additional support for other platforms is planned for next year as part of a dynamic infrastructure.
For more information: http://www.ibm.com/dynamicinfrastructure
Teradata Enterprise Analytics Cloud extends architectural flexibility and business agility
First public and private Cloud Computing offer for rapid analytics
Teradata Corporation, the world’s largest company solely focused on data warehousing and enterprise analytics, announced that the Teradata Enterprise Analytics Cloud(TM) provides Teradata customers architectural flexibility, which enables them to meet their expanding analytic needs by leveraging cloud computing technologies. Initial offerings include the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud, Teradata Express on Amazon EC2, and Teradata Express for VMware Player.
For the business user, public and private clouds provide flexible, self service for the rapid building of short term analytic data marts, allowing users to pay only for the computing power actually used. More importantly, these cloud solutions offer business users and developers another means of improving decision making with agility and speed.
Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud
The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud, Teradata’s entry into private Cloud Computing, is a unique set of products, capabilities and services designed to enable agile analytics in a Teradata private cloud environment. This allows for rapid development and sandbox-style analytics. Business users can create data marts inside their Teradata system within minutes. This eliminates the need to build separate, costly physical data marts, because the production data can be accessed directly, without data movement or duplication. Built on the proven Teradata Database and platforms, the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud combines advanced workload management, the new Teradata Elastic Mart Builder tool, and a services methodology to enable business users to rapidly exploit data marts inside their Teradata System. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is a Teradata Viewpoint self-service portlet that makes it easy to create data marts for application development. It is flexible and allows external data to be combined with existing data facilitating the discovery of new insights. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is being released as a free tool to be deployed through Teradata Developer Exchange. Teradata Active System Management, the company’s flagship workload management product, is a key enabler because it optimizes priorities between experimental analytics and production workloads.
The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud allows the business user to rapidly analyze data and respond to market opportunities with speed and confidence. This solution helps chief information officers control data mart proliferation, reduce costs for software licenses and servers, and lower training and labor costs.
“Many IT organizations are under-resourced and under tremendous pressure to cut costs, driving some business users to create their own ’shadow IT’ organizations to meet their needs,” said Scott Gnau, chief developer officer, Teradata Corporation. “These shadow IT groups create conflict between the business users and IT groups. The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud helps to eliminate the conflicts and brings business and IT together, saving money and enriching their analytical insights.”
Teradata Express Cloud Offerings
The two new Teradata Express cloud offerings are built on Teradata Express, which is a free, non-production version of Teradata Database software intended for developers and evaluation scenarios. The cloud versions of Teradata Express support up to one terabyte of data and are powered by Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.
Teradata Express on Amazon EC2
Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 is available on the flexible Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). This prepackaged edition is a free developer version of the Teradata Database for use in the scalable, robust Amazon EC2 environment. Customers can quickly launch Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 and begin their collaborative work from any location in the world. Customers benefit from the easy self-service, flexible configurations, and the cost effective Amazon Web Services infrastructure, resulting in faster time to value and the quicker completion of projects.
Teradata Express for VMware Player
Teradata Express for VMware Player delivers a fully configured Teradata Database bundled for private cloud analytics. Once VMware software is installed, the Teradata Database can be loaded in minutes, taking advantage of the many features of VMware. For the Teradata Database, VMware is an important stepping stone towards delivering internal private clouds for developers and information technology operations managers. The value for customers will be the easy creation of Teradata test and development environments with a significant reduction in capital costs from server consolidation.
According to Gnau, “Teradata is all about choice that no other vendor can offer. Teradata’s advocated architecture is an integrated data warehouse, but we offer the flexibility for customers to leverage the power of Teradata in any architecture they chose to meet their business need. Our entry into loud Cloud Computing is one alternative and an extension to our Platform Family, which positions ‘Teradata for all your analytical needs.’”
Teradata is the only vendor to offer a broad family of platforms with price and performance that spans the unique business and analytical data warehouse needs of companies, making Teradata suitable to be everywhere in the enterprise. The family is supported by the high performance and dependable Teradata 13 Database, the most significant and technically advanced database for analytics.
Printing with Windows Small Business Server 2008
ThinPrint simplifies Remote Web Workplace printing
Print-optimization specialist ThinPrint is now offering new product versions for the Windows Small Business Server. The .print RDP Engine for Remote Web Workplace 7.6 and .print for Remote Web Workplace 7.6 optimize printing for users who use the Remote Web Workplace to access a remote terminal server or desktop via a web browser.
The Windows Small Business Server tends to be utilized by small and mid-sized companies with up to 75 workstations or users. Remote Web Workplace, a feature of the Small Business Server, allows smaller branch offices, mobile employees and home workstations to access a terminal server or a remote desktop via a secure web session (https).
The .print RDP Engine for Remote Web Workplace provides locally available printers when a user accesses the terminal server with Remote Web Workplace, while the .print for Remote Web Workplace solution provides this when a user connects to a desktop with Remote Web Workplace. Access to the Remote Web Workplace printing functions becomes quick and easy in each case. In addition, the print data transferred by both .print solutions is highly compressed, meaning that it reaches the printer rapidly while conserving bandwidth.
Thanks to ThinPrint’s DRIVER FREE PRINTING technology, no printer drivers have to be installed on the company’s Small Business Server, the terminal server or desktop. All locally available printers can automatically be accessed by users via the internet. Both SBS printing solutions feature plug and play installation.
Available as 32-bit or 64-bit versions, both are already compatible with Windows 7 and support Windows Small Business Server 2003, as well as 2008.
The .print Engine for Remote Web Workplace, which facilitates access to remote desktops and enables Remote Web Workplace printing, is now available for 69 USD from the manufacturer’s online shop at http://www.thinprint.com/shop. The software can also be purchased from any of ThinPrint’s 500 partners worldwide.
Free 30-day demo versions of Remote Web Workplace printing, Remote printing, SBC printing, RDP printing and Virtual printing can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website at http://www.thinprint.com/demo.
WinZip 14 takes advantage of Windows 7 innovations
New WinZip 14 offers many usability enhancements, improved security, and a new Backup Edition
WinZip 14 takes full advantage of the new capabilities in Windows(R) 7, streamlining the zipping and unzipping processes and affirming WinZip’s position at the vanguard of file compression, encryption, packaging and data backup software. In addition to the Standard edition and the full-featured Pro edition, WinZip 14 is now also available in the new Backup edition.
WinZip 14 saves time and space, making it easy to zip and unzip files for quick, efficient, and secure file transfer, email transmission, and data storage. It is the data compression choice for millions of users, including thousands of organizations, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. More than 190 million users have downloaded copies of WinZip from CNET’s download.com alone.
WinZip 14 Incorporates Windows 7 Enhancements
Windows 7 includes many significant enhancements that simplify working with documents, folders, and programs. WinZip 14 takes advantage of these new features to make working with Zip files easier than ever:
Libraries: WinZip 14 provides support for Windows 7 libraries. Libraries group together folders with a common theme; for example, the Pictures library puts all of your folders that contain pictures in one convenient place. With WinZip 14 you can simply select the Pictures library and zip all of your pictures, no matter where they are. And with the advanced JPEG compression supported in the Zipx format you can compress these pictures 20-25% without any loss of quality or data integrity. Backing up your important data is a breeze using libraries via the WinZip Job Wizard.
Jump Lists: WinZip 14 also supports the new Jump Lists. Simply pin the WinZip icon to your taskbar for quick and easy access to frequently used zip features, as well as to recently used Zip files and WinZip jobs.
Windows Touch: If you have a touch screen computer you will love WinZip’s full support for gestures — simple finger movements — on your touch screen PC. Using gestures, you can easily scroll through the contents of your Zip files. You can even pan, zoom, and rotate your images in WinZip Pro’s built-in Image Viewer without touching your keyboard or mouse!
Other interface enhancements include improved Dialogs in the Windows 7 style and new filtering and organizational enhancements for finding files and archives.
Improved Security
A key reason why many users purchase WinZip is its strong, easy-to-use AES encryption. WinZip 14 introduces automatic wiping of temporary copies of encrypted files after viewing, using the U.S. Department of Defense standard (DoD 5220.22-M). In addition, WinZip 14 recognizes Intel-based computers with built-in AES encryption and uses the available hardware support to make encryption operations two to three times faster.
WinZip 14 Backup edition
For the first time WinZip 14 is also available in a Backup edition. With its powerful Job Wizard users can automatically backup important data files and upload data backups to an off-site server using the internal FTP client, or burn backups to CD or DVD. An automated email notification can be sent upon job completion.
Availability
WinZip 14 is available now. Pricing starts at $29.95 (USD) for WinZip 14 Standard edition, $39.95 (USD) for Backup edition and $49.95 (USD) for Pro edition. Attractive volume licensing discounts are available. Existing registered users can upgrade to WinZip 14 at 50% of the new license fee.
Download links and ordering information can be found on the WinZip web site at http://www.winzip.com.