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Bluefin storage standard on the horizon
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APAC
Telecom services market to reach US$ 137 billion in
2006
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Net4India
receives permission to launch ILD services
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Solaris
9 integrates Sun ONE for free
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HP-UX
11I v1.6 to support Itanium
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FireWire
may lose its fire with USB 2.0
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Lotus
and Windows to step up security features
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Your
network's health
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India's
server market grows by two percent
Bluefin
storage standard on the horizon
The
SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) announced
that a number of companies including IBM, Dell, Veritas,
and Sun have developed and submitted a draft specification
that applies open standards in the creation of a complete
management solution for interoperable, multi-vendor
SANs. The technology is code-named 'Bluefin' and uses
the CIM (Common Information Model) and WBEM (Web-based
Enterprise Management) technology to discover and manage
resources in a multi-vendor SAN through common interfaces.
CIM is an object-oriented information model that provides
a conceptual view of physical and logical system components.
Bluefin is expected to improve storage management applications
and provide management interoperability in heterogeneous
SANs. The DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) and
SNIA have been battling interoperability problems in
storage management for years. The DTMF developed WBEM,
a standard set of Web-based enterprise management tools
that unify management of enterprise computing environments.
SNIA says that WBEM includes the CIM, which is an encoding
specification based on XML and a transport mechanism
based on HTTP.
APAC
Telecom services market to reach US$ 137 billion in
2006
According
to Gartner Dataquest, the APAC (including Japan) fixed
telecom services market after suffering a decline of
4.5 percent in 2001, will increase in revenue to US$
111.6 billion in 2002, up 1.8 percent from 2001. The
industry is expected to continue experiencing single-digit
growth rates through 2006, when the market is projected
to total US$ 136.8 billion. Telephony contributes about
75 percent of the APAC fixed telecom services revenue.
Data services including Internet and public IP services
account for 24 percent of the total market, and is expected
to increase to 35.6 percent by 2006. New services like
IP VPNs and hosting are the fastest growing segments.
Gartner Dataquest analyst said that these segments are
growing from a low base, and contributions to total
revenue will remain small in the forecast period. Broadband
access could become a major revenue stream. More developed
markets such as Japan, Australia, Korea, Hong Kong and
Singapore will experience slow growth rates. Japan will
have a CAGR of 1.4 percent from 2001 through 2006. China's
telecom market will hit US$ 27 billion in 2006 with
a CAGR of 7.9 percent from 2001 through 2006. It will
account for almost 20 percent of the total APAC market
by 2006. India is forecasted to show double-digit growth,
with the telecom services market reaching US$ 14 billion
in 2006, a CAGR of 14 percent from 2001 through 2006.
Net4India
receives permission to launch ILD services
The
Government of India has given a Letter of Intent to
Net4India Ltd, an ISP, to offer ILD (International Long
Distance) services in India. The application for the
license had been filed in March this year. By using
CAC (Carrier Access Codes) or a prepaid calling card
platform, customers will be able to make ISD calls at
40 percent lower costs than the existing rates. With
the launch of ILD services, Net4India becomes a complete
'xOIP' (all data, voice, video available on IP network)
company. Net4India plans to invest 200 Crore over a
period of 2 years in infrastructure. The CEO of Net4India
says the total size of the ISD market in India is US$
1.5 billion and is expected to grow by 25 percent CAGR
over the next 5 years.
Solaris
9 integrates Sun ONE for free
Sun
plans to integrate the Platform edition of its Sun ONE
Application Server, Version 7, with its newly released
Solaris 9. By the end of the year the product will also
be available for free to customers running Windows NT,
Red Hat Linux, AIX, and HP-UX. According to Sun the
move will allow customers to extend Web-based applications
to parts of their business where costs have been prohibitively
high. The Platform and Standard editions of Sun ONE
Application Server 7 for Solaris and Windows NT is expected
by September, and the editions for Linux, HP-UX, and
AIX are expected by this year end. The free Platform
edition includes a Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.3 server
engine, messaging software, support for Web services
standards like SOAP (Simple Object Access protocol),
Web Service Description Language, and an HTTP engine
for basic Web server functions. While licenses for the
Platform edition are available at no cost, support for
the software comes at a price.
HP-UX
11I v1.6 to support Itanium
It's
one of the latest initiatives of HP to migrate its users
from proprietary RISC systems to standard Intel servers.
The release of its latest version of HP-UX called HP-UX
11i Version 1.6 is the first high-end Unix OS that has
been designed from the ground up for Intel's 64-bit
Itanium architecture. According
to HP, the OS offers exactly the same functions and
features as HP's Unix version for PA-RISC boxes. This
means that users may be able to take applications running
on HP's current PA-RISC servers and run them unchanged
on Itanium boxes. But
users will have to wait until a new generation of Itanium
servers begins to ship later this year to see what price/performance
gains they can derive by moving applications from PA-RISC
servers. Though PA-RISC-based Unix applications will
run unchanged on Intel servers, users will need to recompile
many of them if they want optimal performance on Itanium
technology.
FireWire
may lose its fire with USB 2.0
The
high-speed USB 2.0 (Universal Serial Bus) has been installed
by most PC makers in their product lines over the last
few months. USB 2.0 can move data up to 480 Mbps and
provides competition to FireWire, a technology invented
by Apple Computer that transports data at 400 Mbps.
FireWire had gained popularity at the expense of USB
2.0, which was delayed. But with USB 2.0 in the market,
FireWire may lose its fire. At the same time a new version
of FireWire is on the anvil which will transmit data
at 800 Mbps. USB enables plugging in of several devices
into the same port. Dell intends to make USB 2.0 its
standard method for connecting devices to its desktop
PCs. It plans to eliminate a number of specialized ports
those specifically used to connect PC's keyboard, mouse
and printer replacing them with USB 2.0 ports. Also
80 to 90 percent of Intel desktop platforms will have
integrated USB 2.0 by the end of the year.
Lotus
and Windows to step up security features
The
Lotus Software Group will include new server-side tools
to reject spam before it hits an end user's mailbox
in its upcoming Notes R6 software, the next version
of the IBM subsidiary's e-mail and collaboration software.
According to IBM, R6 will offer the ability to automatically
block e-mail from IP addresses like those listed on
the MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention System) RBL (Realtime
Blackhole List). MAPS, a nonprofit operation run mostly
by volunteers in California handles complaints from
individuals and companies about bulk, unsolicited commercial
e-mail, colloquially known as spam. If MAPS finds an
individual or company responsible for sending spam,
the organization places the associated IP address on
the RBL. Service providers and companies can then subscribe
to the list and set blocks so their servers won't accept
e-mail coming from those IP addresses. In Notes R6,
the server software will automatically block the sites
on the RBL and filter the header and body of an e-mail
for key words and phrases an administrator considers
a likely indicator of spam. In the current version of
the software R5, Notes administrators can set up these
rules. But in R6, the scripts come ready to be run out
of the box, requiring only the addition of words and
phrases. On the other front, Microsoft wants to add
security hardware prior to a future release of its Windows
OS. The company wants future PCs to contain a security
technology called Palladium, and is in discussions with
Intel and AMD to develop the chips. The new architecture
would entail a security chip used for encryption which
when added to PCs along with new APIs (Application-Program
Interfaces) take advantage of Palladium. Palladium may
also cover chipsets, graphics processors and USB I/O
systems. The timeframe for Palladium's inclusion into
Windows is uncertain for now, as the initiative is only
in its early stage.
Your
network's health
If
you face scalability and ease of use issues in your
network, your network's health and availability needs
to be looked into. Network management tools that perform
these functions may soon become a vital administrator's
preference. An example of such a tool is Concord Communications'
eHealth Suite, which is an integrated performance and
availability management solution. Concord claims that
a fault management tool by itself cannot identify the
problem thus an integrated fault management and performance
tool is needed. This tool works by polling all the network
devices and applications on the network. The tools capture
the critical matrix, be it availability, bandwidth or
packets in/out, from all devices. The data is collected
in the database and a trend or behavioral history of
each device is generated. The advantage of this solution
is that any new device added is included in the polling
and reports are generated inclusive of the new device.
By doing this the entire network topology can be viewed
and the exact link with the fault can be pointed out.
- Minu Sirsalewala
India's
server market grows by two percent
The
APAC server market (excluding Japan) saw a growth of
nearly one-percent for Q1-2002 compared to Q1-2001.
These are figures released in Gartner Dataquest's final
Asia-Pacific server market statistics report for the
first quarter of 2002.
From a yearly perspective, Singapore and India were
the only two countries to record a positive increase
in over all server revenue. They recorded 25.9 percent
and two percent growth respectively. The
APAC server market witnessed a decline in shipments
both quarterly and annually at around twelve percent
and three percent respectively. Low
shipments from China, and a decline in the unit shipments
from Korea, Taiwan and India resulted in the three percent
unit decrease across the region. Overall
the 2002 server market figures for India were not disappointing
considering the current economic scenario.
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