NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 7 August
07-08-2007
by Stephen Errity
CA launches Unicenter Service Catalogue | Mobile broadband users to hit 1 billion by 2012
CA has announced the release of its Unicenter Service Catalogue. The company says the new product will enable IT managers to define and deliver IT services in business terms by providing a centralised source of information for all services. The company also announced a new release of its Unicenter Service Accounting product, that enables financial accountability by providing budgeting and planning controls and costing based on actual IT service usage.
SAP has announced the launch of its '60 Best Practices'. They include 'out-of-the-box' integrated business processes, methodologies and documentation to help companies expedite solution implementation and improve operational excellence. The 60 new offerings cover business process scenarios for specific industries such as process manufacturing, consumer products and professional services and are further available in specialised country versions to support customers in all operating regions of SAP.
More than 1 billion people will be using mobile broadband services by the year 2012, according to a new study by Juniper Research. The study also predicts that the value of mobile broadband service revenues globally will grow to over USD400 billion per annum by 2012. Demand is expected to come mainly from North America and Western Europe and to a lesser extent the Far East and China. The study's authors said that the main issue that will dictate take-up for the technology will be the availability of suitable devices -- whether that be handsets, laptops, data cards, or other types of device such as media players.
Lenovo and Novell announced Monday that certain Lenovo laptops will come pre-loaded with the Novell's Linux operating system. Specifically, the agreement calls for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 to be preloaded onto T-series notebooks beginning in the fourth quarter of 2007. Lenovo is also set to provide technical support for the operating system. "We have seen more customers utilizing and requesting open source notebook solutions in education, government and the enterprise since our ThinkPad T60p Linux announcement, and today's announcement expands upon our efforts by offering customers more Linux options," said Sam Dusi, vice president of product marketing for the Notebook Business Unit at Lenovo.
Researchers at the University of California have uncovered big differences in the way e-mail spam and online scams are operated. The researchers from the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego reported that, while hundreds or thousands of compromised computers may be used to relay spam to users, most scams are hosted by individual web servers. They analysed spam-advertised web servers hosting online scams that either offer merchandise and services or use malicious means to defraud users. Their work is due to be presented at the USENIX Security 2007 conference in Boston on 9 August.
Samsung Electronics moved to calm fears of a chip supply shortage on Monday, saying it would be increasing production levels after a power outage disabled its factory in Kiheung, South Korea last week. The company said over the weekend that its chip lines had resumed full operation at noon on Saturday and expected the total losses from the outage to be in the region of USD43 million. It did not expect that supplies of flash memory to important clients such as Nokia and Apple would be disrupted. Shares in Samsung's competitors in the chip production market jumped on news of the incident, with some analysts speculating that it could prompt some of Samsung's major clients to diversify their supplier base.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 