For the record 7 September

07-09-2006

by Deirdre McArdle

Shareholders approve Alcatel-Lucent merger | eBay Ireland to host eBay University

IBM has announced that it has been selected by the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to design and build what is believed to be the world's most powerful supercomputer, codenamed Roadrunner. The supercomputer will be installed at the Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory where it will be used to handle a broad spectrum of scientific and commercial applications. The supercomputer design will include new, highly sophisticated software to orchestrate over 16,000 AMD Opteron processor cores and over 16,000 Cell B.E. processors. It will be capable of a peak performance of over 1.6 petaflops (or 1.6 thousand trillion calculations per second). The machine is to be built entirely from commercially available hardware and based on the Linux operating system. IBM System xTM 3755 servers based on AMD Opteron technology will be deployed in conjunction with IBM BladeCenter H systems with Cell B.E. technology.

At the firm's annual shareholders' meeting on Thursday, shareholders of Alcatel approved all the proposed resolutions related to the merger with Lucent Technologies. "The merger between Alcatel and Lucent is a strategic fit, and, by coming together, will be the global leader in convergence," said Graeme Allan, country director for UK and Ireland, Alcatel enterprise activities. Lucent shareholders also approved the merger at the Lucent Shareholders' Meeting, held on Thursday.

In light of recent job cuts at Intel, Tony McGuire, managing director of System Dynamics warned that Irish technology companies need to grow rapidly in size to lessen the country's reliance on the multinational technology companies. "We need businesses of size so that we can compete with foreign companies; businesses that grow big enough to be able to handle the swings and roundabouts that are part and parcel of all business but that are particularly acute in the IT industry. The good news for those being laid off at Intel is that there is what I can only describe as an enormous demand in the Irish market for trained, experienced, IT sector workers," he said.

On 12 September eBay will host eBay University at the Blanchardstown Institute of Technology. The training course will feature "how to sell" seminars for successful trading on eBay, as well as giving people tips on how to make money on the online auction site. eBay Ireland has 200,000 registered buyers and sellers and claims that an item is sold by an Irish "eBayer" every minute.

Northgate Information Solutions, a supplier of software applications and outsourcing solutions, has become the official IT partner of the Ulster Rugby Football Union. As part of the deal, the firm is to upgrade and reconfigure Ulster Rugby's IT systems and provide IT support and resilience to ensure the continued smooth running of the club and its customer-facing operations.