"Eastlink To Go" Takes TV Everywhere With the Power of Cisco Videoscape

"Eastlink To Go" Takes TV Everywhere With the Power of Cisco Videoscape

Innovative Mobile Video Platform Offers TV Content on PCs, Laptops, Tablets and Mobile Devices

HALIFAX, NS and TORONTO--(Marketwire - Nov 20, 2012) - Cisco today announced that Eastlink, a leading telecommunications service provider in Canada, is using Cisco Videoscape™ to power its new mobile video platform, Eastlink To Go, which delivers new consumer experiences anytime, anywhere. Eastlink digital TV customers now can watch their favourite TV content at no extra cost when outside the home -- on their PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

Eastlink To Go enables content to fit on any screen through an intuitive technology that adapts the format of the content for optimum quality and a superior viewing experience.

Facts and Highlights:

- Eastlink customers can use Eastlink To Go by simply logging in to a one-step, easy-to-use portal platform. They will be able to access Hollywood Suite OnDemand and Eastlink TV OnDemand, as well as live content from Eastlink TV.

- Eastlink has more than 1,600 employees providing a range of video, internet, phone, community programming, home security and advertising services to residential, business and public sector customers in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia and Bermuda.

- Cisco Videoscape harnesses the potential of cloud, network and client to bring live and on-demand video across a number of network devices such as laptops, smartphones and Android devices.

- Cisco Videoscape reinvents the TV experience by letting service providers bring together content from pay TV, online and on-demand sources. Content can further be combined with social media, communications and mobility to create a 'better-than-being-there' video experience.

- In developing Eastlink To Go, Eastlink has used the power of Videoscape to deliver a "TV Everywhere" experience and extend branded content such as on-demand, online and linear TV to customers' PCs and Macintosh computers, tablets and smartphones. The deployed Videoscape solutions include Cisco Videoscape Distribution Suite, Cisco Videoscape Media Suite, Cisco Media Processor and Transcode Manager, and Cisco Videoscape Soft Clients. Together, these components provide a pre-integrated, pre-tested "TV Everywhere" solution that can be deployed right away and can be used as a platform to roll out new services in the future.

Supporting quotes:

Lee Bragg, CEO, Eastlink:

"The amount of video content our customers watch continues to increase, and so do the ways in which our customers want to view that content. Eastlink To Go, powered by Cisco Videoscape, is another great example of our continued focus on innovation to ensure our customers have the products and services they need to adapt to a rapidly evolving video environment."

Mark Kummer, vice president, Service Provider, Cisco Canada:

"Eastlink was among the first end-to-end Cisco Videoscape customers and continues to use the technology in innovative ways to enhance the video experience of its customers as it moves towards a fully-realized all-IP model. Eastlink To Go offers a versatile and highly convenient experience, allowing users to take TV service with them for anywhere/anytime access. In today's growing competitive climate, service providers need to constantly evolve their offerings, and Videoscape is one of the tools they can use to stay at the top of the game."

Supporting Resources:

- Eastlink http://www.eastlink.ca/default.aspx

- Cisco Videoscape http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1043/networking_solutions_market_segment_solution.html

- Follow Cisco Canada on Twitter https://twitter.com/ciscocanada and Facebook

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco Canada Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, has offices across Canada dedicated to customer support, sales and service. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/canada/.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds 

Contact Information

Karin Scott
Cisco
416-306-7164
kariscot@cisco.com

Andrea Berry
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Cisco)
416-961-5595, Ext. 428
andrea@stratamp.com


 
 
 

Sightline Innovation and University of Western Ontario collaborate on the SAR2 research project.

Sightline Innovation and University of Western Ontario collaborate on the SAR2 research project, to drive Search and Rescue technology into the next generation.

TORONTO, Nov. 15, 2012 /CNW/ - Sightline Innovation Inc., a Toronto-based technology company, today announced the SAR2 research project with the Department of Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. SAR2 aims to develop a low cost radar sensor specifically designed for the unique challenges of Search and Rescue, with broad aircraft mounting compatibilities including UAS/UAV, civilian, and military SaR (Search & Rescue) aircraft. Sightline Innovation and the University of Western Ontario believe SAR2 can build on Canada's leadership in Space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar from its RADARSAT-2 and future RADARSAT Constellation satellites, which deliver enhanced geographical data. Dr. Jagath Samarabandu of the University of Western Ontario's Department of Engineering said "We are excited to partner with Sightline Innovation on this project. We are beginning to push the boundary in this space with several innovative concepts in developing low cost RADAR systems and are confident that Sightline is the right partner to commercialize these ideas." When integrated into the SaRASA product from Sightline Innovation's VtiSystems subsidiary, SAR2 will allow users to process, analyze, and distribute, real-time sensor information across secure mobile devices. SAR2 is an abbreviation for Search and Rescue Synthetic Aperture Radar. "SAR2's success will enable Synthetic Aperture Radar sensors to be mounted on a wider distribution of aircraft, due to significant cost-reduction compared to what is on the market today," said Wallace Trenholm, CEO of Sightline Innovation.

Sightline Innovation, founded in 2006, is the parent company of VtiSystems Inc., the provider of an "Application-Specific Mobile C4ISR" platform. The SAR2 effort will integrate into the SaRASA product offering by VtiSystems. SaRASA stands for "Search and Rescue Augmented Situational Awareness." SaRASA is a mobile delivery system for mission waypoint, target and objective information, and distributes access to flight crews, on-board SaR technicians, and ground operatives from multiple organizations. SaRASA can process data feeds from a number of imagery and telemetry sources, such as: EO/IR, Synthetic Aperture Radar, RF signal detection, and data networks such as COSPAS-SARSAT. The SaRASA engine processes data from these inputs into mission intelligence such as zones or points of interest. SaRASA's feature-set helps focus and refine deployment plans, minimize costs and flight times, and ultimately help Search and Rescue operators perform their mission to save lives.

Sightline Innovation will be at SARScene 2012, vendor booth #213, at the Allstream Centre in Toronto.

SOURCE: Sightline Innovation Inc

For further information:

Kyle Joseph-Hill
Corporate Development Coordinator
(416) 275-5148, kjh@sightlineinnovation.com























































































































Toronto-based Kallo's EMCURx Conferred Status Of "Official EMR Pediatrics Section, OMA"

Kallo's EMCURx Conferred Status Of "Official EMR Pediatrics Section, OMA"

TORONTO, Nov. 19, 2012 /CNW/ - At the recently held Practical Pediatrics Ontario Conference on November 9th and 10th, Kallo (OTCQB: KALO) introduced EMCURx PEMR, an electronic medical record system that was specially customized for pediatric practices and work flows, and recommended by the Pediatrics Section, Ontario Medical Association (OMA) as the EMR of choice that Ontario Pediatricians should strongly consider for their practices.

"Though Ontario is the largest market in Canada for EMR, pediatricians in this province have been neglected, and forced to work with paper records or EMRs unsuitable for pediatric use. Over the past six months, Kallo's EMCURx-PEMR has been customized in consultation with the Pediatric Section, OMA," says Vince Leitao, President and COO of Kallo Inc. "Our development team has visited numerous pediatric clinics and talked to nurses, clinic administrators and pediatricians. In consultation with these healthcare providers, we have created a specialty product for specialists. We are delighted to continue to work with the Pediatric Section, OMA and provide an innovative and better product to our Pediatricians."

Dr. Hirotaka Yamashiro, Chair of the Pediatrics Section, OMA, noted that most current EMR offerings available to Ontario Pediatricians did not work well for pediatricians' unique needs. Dr Yamashiro said, "As natural leaders in excellent health care for children and youth, we approached many vendors to create an EMR that spoke to the needs of pediatricians, and were excited when Kallo stepped up to the plate and delivered this product. We anticipate that as pediatricians adopt and use this EMR, further improvements will be made to make this the best pediatrician friendly EMR product ever brought to market, and look forward to engaging Kallo's development team to reach this goal."

There are approximately 1200 pediatricians in Ontario, and until now many were hesitant to adopt EMR for their practices due to a lack of suitable products.

Kallo Inc., is a publicly traded company, listed on the OTC markets, (otcmarkets.com) stock symbol KALO.QB

Media contact:
John Cecil or Vince Leitao
416-246-9997
http://www.kalloinc.ca

SOURCE: Kallo Inc.

For further information:

http://www.kalloinc.ca








































































Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Meraki

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Meraki

Acquisition Accelerates Cisco's Evolution toward Software-centric Solutions; Expands Cloud-based Network Offerings to New Markets

SAN JOSE, Calif. – November 18, 2012 – Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held Meraki Inc., a leader in cloud networking. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., with offices in New York, London and Mexico, Meraki offers midmarket customers easy-to-deploy on-premise networking solutions that can be centrally managed from the cloud.

As the IT industry transforms in the mobile-cloud era, Cisco is solving customers’ networking and business enablement challenges by delivering cloud networking and device and security services. The acquisition of Meraki complements and expands Cisco’s strategy to offer more software-centric solutions to simplify network management, help customers empower mobile workforces, and generate new revenue opportunities for partners.

Meraki’s cloud networking solutions will expand Cisco’s network offerings by providing scalable solutions for midmarket businesses. The Meraki acquisition will also strengthen Cisco’s Unified Access platform, which makes IT more responsive to business innovation by simplifying IT operations and uniting wired and wireless networks, policy and management into one integrated network infrastructure, unlike other competitive offerings. 

“The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “Meraki’s solution was built from the ground up optimized for cloud, with tremendous scale, and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.”

Meraki technology offers customers Wi-Fi, switching, security and mobile device management centrally managed from the cloud. Meraki solutions support BYOD, guest networking, application control, WAN optimization, application firewall and other advanced networking services.

Meraki was founded by members of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. Meraki combines a high-velocity software development methodology with a tightly linked inside sales and channel model that will form the new Cloud Networking Group.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives to acquire the entire business and operations of Meraki. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2013, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review.

Investor and Media Events:

Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Cisco's Enterprise Networking Group; Hilton Romanski, vice president of business development for Cisco; and Sanjit Biswas, chief executive officer and co-founder of Meraki will host a joint investor call on November 19 from 6:00-6:45 a.m. PST to discuss the proposed transaction. 

To participate in this call via Cisco Webex, go to https://cisco.webex.com/cisco/onstage/g.php?d=209867958&t=a To ask questions during the call, you must access the meeting via this Webex link. The event password is 209 867 958. The dial-in number is +1.866.432.9903 (United States/Canada). International callers can access country phone numbers at http://cisco.com/en/US/about/doing_business/conferencing/index.html. Follow the prompts to enter the Access Code (209 867 958) followed by the # sign.  The replay also will be available via webcast from Monday, November 19, 2012 on the Cisco Investor Relations website at http://investor.cisco.com.  

Supporting Resources:

 

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

 

Tags/keywords: Cisco, Meraki, acquisition, Unified Access, mobility, wireless, wired, switching, cloud, network, security, BYOD, IT, Borderless Networks, access point, Aironet, Catalyst, video, service provider, SP, switch, CleanAir, controller, Cisco Prime, Identity Services Engine, Mobility Services Engine, ISE, MSE, 802.11ac


About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.  Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.  For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Dell Acquires Gale Technologies, a Leading Provider of Infrastructure Automation Solutions

Dell Acquires Gale Technologies, a Leading Provider of Infrastructure Automation Solutions

Date : 16/11/2012
Round Rock, Texas

Share. Tweet This LinkedIn Share Google+ 1 Facebook Like Follow.dell on facebook @dell on twitter Join the conversation.
#Acquisitions, #DellSoftware


  • Gale Technologies provides leading IT management, automation and orchestration capabilities for on-premise and hybrid clouds.
  • Dell forms new division to design and deliver integrated enterprise IT solutions and fuel enterprise growth.
  • Dell announces an expansion of the Active System Manager to include a new, complementary product based on Gale Technologies technology.

Dell today announced the acquisition of Gale Technologies, a leading provider of infrastructure automation software that allows organizations to streamline the deployment of on-premise and hybrid clouds for self-service access to infrastructure. Dell also announced the formation of its Enterprise Systems & Solutions organization focused on the delivery of converged and enterprise workload topologies and solutions in alignment with Dell’s Enterprise vision.

Gale Technologies helps customers turn discrete compute, network and storage components into integrated and highly-optimized application, virtual desktop infrastructure, and private cloud solutions featuring self-service and advanced automation. Gale Technologies’ solution provides a comprehensive management, automation and orchestration platform for simplifying end-to-end provisioning across heterogeneous infrastructures. Gale Technologies delivers automated physical and virtual resource allocation, preserves best practice enterprise infrastructure deployment through reusable templates, and masks that complexity from the end user to provide a valuable enterprise asset.

Gale Technologies’ solutions are complementary to Dell’s enterprise approach in that they provide cost-effective management and orchestration tools that are easy to deploy and customize in both homogeneous and heterogeneous IT environments. This approach allows customers to extend their current IT investments to capitalize on new IT models.

Dell has taken significant steps to expand its enterprise solutions portfolio to help IT organizations more rapidly respond to business demands, improve efficiency, and strengthen IT services quality. In its 3rd fiscal quarter, Dell’s server and networking business grew 11 percent year-over-year. Dell was the only server provider among the top three to have positive unit growth in the quarter and expects Gale Technologies to benefit from that reach.

Through the acquisition and development of its own IP, Dell has built a set of unique assets to deliver the scalable IT infrastructure of the future based on standardized technologies. The addition of Gale Technologies will help accelerate the momentum of Dell’s converged infrastructure family, Active Infrastructure, and extend development of additional integrated enterprise solutions.

“Today, enterprises need solutions that enable operational benefits of speed, efficiency, and flexibility in the allocation and use of resources,” said Marius Haas, president, Dell Enterprise Solutions Group. “Gale Technologies integrates well with our Active Infrastructure family, and provides an intuitive, flexible and comprehensive foundation for application, virtual desktop infrastructure and private cloud deployments for our customers.”

“We are excited to join the Dell team and contribute to the company’s transformation into an end-to-end IT solutions provider by extending the Active Infrastructure family of converged solutions. Combining Dell’s global scale, reach and enterprise portfolio with our people and technology will allow IT organizations to greatly improve the agility and efficiency of today’s and tomorrow’s data centers,” said Nariman Teymourian, CEO, Gale Technologies.

Enterprise Systems & Solutions Organization
Dell today announced the creation of a new division, the Enterprise Systems & Solutions organization, to develop converged and enterprise workload solutions. This group extends Dell’s growing enterprise momentum by focusing on optimizing infrastructure for enterprise applications and complex workloads to help customers achieve increased IT agility while balancing capital costs. This new organization will be led by vice president and general manager Dario Zamarian, who previously headed Dell’s Networking business as vice president and general manager. Zamarian will report to Marius Haas, president, Dell Enterprise Solutions Group.

The Enterprise Systems and Solutions organization will accelerate Dell’s ability to design solutions that enable complex topologies to be deployed more rapidly by customers. The team’s charter includes:

  • Designing repeatable enterprise infrastructure models which enable pre-built solutions that can be assembled by Dell or customer architects
  • Develop a single framework to manage complex topologies that include server and storage resources, software images, and network connectivity.

“As customers increasingly move to fully-integrated solutions, we are favorably positioned to capitalize on these trends with industry-leading server, storage, networking, and software assets coupled together as end-to-end systems,” said Dario Zamarian, vice president and general manager, Dell Enterprise Systems & Solutions. “In creating this new organization, we plan to accelerate our ability to deliver differentiated value to customers – providing them with improved operational efficiency and the right balance of capability and price.”

As Zamarian moves to his new role, Tom Burns joins Dell as vice president and general manager, Dell Networking, reporting to Haas. Burns comes to Dell from Alcatel-Lucent where he was most recently the president of the Enterprise and Strategic Industries Business Group. Prior to this position, Burns was president of the Enterprise Product Group, responsible for product strategy and all sales and marketing activities for the company’s enterprise business which included, voice, unified communications and networking and security solutions.

Dell Adds to the Active Infrastructure Family by Expanding Active System Manager
Dell last month announced the Active System Manager, an intuitive tool for the most common infrastructure administrative tasks that is central to the Active System converged infrastructure offering. Today, Dell is announcing an expansion of Active System Manager to include a new, complementary product based on Gale Technologies technology. This new product will provide customers with an IaaS platform for end-to-end automation and orchestration of application, virtual desktop infrastructure and private cloud deployments using VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technologies. It will be available on Dell’s current vStart models and the new Active System 800 early next year. Support for third-party infrastructure solutions will be available in later releases.

Terms of Transaction
Gale Technologies was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. Dell plans to keep Gale Technologies’ employees and, consistent with its approach to previous acquisitions, will continue to invest in additional engineering and sales capability to grow this business. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com.

Dell World
Join us at Dell World 2012 – The Power to Do More. Technology professionals will learn from one another and identify key challenges and opportunities connected to the top forces changing business today. Learn more at www.dellworld.com or follow #DellWorld on Twitter.

Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending is Forecast to Grow 2.5 Percent in 2013

Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending is Forecast to Grow 2.5 Percent in 2013

STAMFORD, Conn., November 15, 2012—      Worldwide enterprise IT spending is forecast to total $2.679 trillion in 2013, a 2.5 percent increase of projected 2012 spending of $2.603 trillion, according to Gartner, Inc. Banking, communications, media and services (CMS) and manufacturing are expected to offer the largest volume of growth opportunities through 2016. 

"The global economic outlook has deteriorated in 2012, leading to scant overall growth in enterprise IT spending," said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner. "However, our third-quarter outlook points to more substantial growth in 2013, if significant fiscal crises are avoided in the U.S. and Europe, and in subsequent years. Most enterprises have already significantly cut discretionary IT spending growth over the past several years and, barring a global economic catastrophe and significant contraction of operations, they have little room to reduce IT spending further over the long run." 

The manufacturing and natural resources sector will lead the vertical markets with total spending expected to reach $478 billion in 2013, up 2.3 percent from $467 billion in 2012. Manufacturers typically plan and manage a significant portion of their IT costs in expectation of changes in their sales. Additionaly, manufacturers worldwide have been steadily reducing their IT purchases as a percentage of their sales since the recession of 2008. The manufacturing industry's IT buying center has adopted tighter IT cost controls amid a myriad of mixed market signals. However, IT spending rates are expected will bottom out in 2013 and will be resilient over the long run, as business confidence is restored and the value proposition of a nexus of new technology forces — social, mobile, big data and cloud — is increasingly championed by senior leaders. 

The banking and securities sector will have strong growth in 2013 and is expected to reach $460 billion in 2013, up 3.5 percent from $445 billion in 2012. Banking and securities is an IT-intensive industry, spending approximately three times as much on IT as a percentage of revenue than the average of all industries. This trend is expected to continue due to a significant amount of IT required to run activities such as lending, payments, trading and risk management. 

The CMS sector is forecast to grow 3 percent in 2013 to $426 billion, up from $414 billion in 2012. Firms in the CMS sectors will typically spend approximately 5 percent of their revenue on IT on average over a five-year period, well above the median for all industries.  

"Several subsectors within CMS are heavily IT-intensive. Professional and IT services firms, communications service providers, software and Internet services, and media companies invest considerably in IT across hardware, software, IT services, internal services and telecommunications," Mr. Brant said. "With demands for a secure Internet connected backbone and faster wireless data services, coupled with the pervasiveness of social media and video, these industries will need to continue to invest in IT." 

In the short term, transportation and insurance will also be high-growth sectors with both reaching more than 4 percent growth in 2013. IT spending in the transportation sector is expected to total $126 billion in 2013, up from $121 billion in 2012. IT spending in insurance will reach $187 billion in 2013, up from $179 billion in 2012.

In 2012, government IT spending is forecast to decline 2 percent and the decline is expected to continue through 2013. In 2013, government IT spending is forecast to total $445 billion, down from $447 billion in 2012. 

"Austerity measures and budgetary reductions have affected government spending worldwide as measured by the reconciliation of government budget proposals across the U.S. and Europe," said Mr. Brant. "However, in some respects, IT budgets are being "decoupled" from the overall operating pressures facing governments. At the same time, government organizations recognize that new technology investments may help reduce the cost of service delivery, improve operational efficiency or reduce future expenditure. Consequently, government IT spending intensity is beginning to diverge from traditional operational spending trends." 

Large industry market operating under fiscal pressure, such as government, can also provide market opportunities as IT departments must strive to modernize and increase service levels without increasing resources. The need for greater efficiency and productivity gains in industries operating under severe fiscal constraints can also create opportunities for disruptive IT innovation and for the displacement of incumbent IT market leaders. 

Additional information is available in the report "Forecast Analysis: Enterprise IT Spending by Vertical Industry Market, Worldwide, 2010-2016, 3Q12 Update." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2230115.

Contacts:

Christy Pettey
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com

Rob van der Meulen
Gartner
+44 0 1784 267892
rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com


About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,000 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, www.gartner.com.

Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Knowledge 8.5

Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Knowledge 8.5

Oracle’s Most Comprehensive Knowledge Management Release Helps Organizations Deliver the Right Answers at the Right Time to Agents and Customers


Redwood Shores, CA – November 15, 2012

News Facts

Continuing its commitment to helping organizations deliver best-in-class customer experiences by tapping into enterprise data, Oracle today announced Oracle Knowledge 8.5, the industry-leading knowledge management software that supports web self-service, agent-assisted service and customer communities.
Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most comprehensive release since the acquisition of Inquira in October 2011. It introduces significant product enhancements, improved analytics and advances in both performance and scalability.
Organizations today understand the imperative to deliver consistent, high-quality customer service and support across channels. Additionally, organizations recognize the need for intelligence to assist in this process. Oracle Knowledge 8.5 proactively delivers relevant, contextual knowledge at the point of interaction to agents, knowledge workers, and customers -- helping increase customer loyalty and reduce costs.
By enabling searches across a wide variety of sources, Oracle Knowledge 8.5 amplifies access to knowledge once hidden in the myriad systems, applications and databases used to store enterprise content.

New Capabilities

AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery: Oracle Knowledge 8.5 introduces AnswerFlow, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery, designed to improve efficiency, lower service costs and provide personalized customer service experiences.
Enhanced Knowledge Analytics: Standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, the industry leading business intelligence suite, Oracle Knowledge 8.5 provides robust analytics functionality that can be tailored to meet unique business needs for different user roles.
Actionable Knowledge Analytics Dashboards: Out-of-the-box dashboards that provide targeted, actionable insights that empower optimized search and content creation in order to meaningfully reduce the effort to find the right information.
Enhanced Language Support: With the enhanced multilingual capabilities available in Oracle Knowledge 8.5, including Natural Language Search support for 16 Languages and Enhanced Keyword Search for most other authoring languages, businesses can rapidly expand global footprints and reach new customers while at the same time reducing the costs of doing so.
Enhanced Multi-lingual Industry Support: Oracle Knowledge 8.5 delivers enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages for the High-Tech, Communications, Financial Services, Insurance and Automotive industries as well as customer help ontology for industry-specific intent-based search.
Expanded Language Model for Global Customers: The new 3-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" within Oracle Knowledge 8.5 provides simplification, automation and an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint.
Improved iConnect Functionality: Oracle Knowledge 8.5 delivers enhanced iConnect for better usability and performance. This specialized knowledge application proactively delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications, allowing front-line employees to reduce the effort to serve customers. 
Platform & Technology Standardization: Oracle Knowledge 8.5 has been certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, reducing cost and complexity for customers to manage assets across platforms.

Oracle Knowledge 8.5 provides the following additional benefits:

The Natural Language Search and Contextual Answer Delivery capabilities in Oracle Knowledge 8.5 understand the true intent of each inquiry, helping to deliver the best possible answers to customers quickly and efficiently.
Significant improvements in scaling and performance capabilities offered with this latest release help organizations to lower administration and operating expenses.
Powerful content acquisition support across multiple, disparate sources offers eased insight into what knowledge is created and helps to make knowledge creation an integral part of the service request process.

Supporting Quote

“Every day, the world’s leading brands rely on Oracle Knowledge to delight the customer and make sales and support teams more efficient and productive through unified knowledge. The introduction of Oracle Knowledge 8.5 creates new opportunities for organizations to efficiently harness their content to empower their customers and frontline employees,” said David Vap, Group Vice President Products, Oracle. “We have made significant development investments since our acquisition of Inquira, and we are now very proud to announce the availability of these efforts with the release of Oracle Knowledge 8.5, making it easier for organizations to gain differentiated advantage at a significantly lower total cost of ownership.”

Supporting Resources

Oracle CX on Social Media

Twitter – Oracle CX

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Info

Christine Randle
Oracle
+1.571.455.0415
christine.randle@oracle.com

Aaron Wessels
Blanc & Otus
+1.415.378.8090
awessels@blancandotus.com

HP Delivers Industry’s First Purpose-built Server for Big Data

HP Delivers Industry’s First Purpose-built Server for Big Data

HP ProLiant SL4500 server series redefines performance, economics

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 15, 2012

HP today unveiled the industry’s first server built to help clients operationalize Big Data, drive new business opportunities and save up to
$1 million over three years.(1)

With the advent of Big Data software and the promise that it brings, many organizations have tried to deploy these solutions on existing architectures not designed to handle the specific needs of these workloads. As a result, the outcomes from these early deployments have been suboptimal from a performance and cost perspective.  

“Big Data application environments such as Hadoop, MPP data warehouses, Big Data analytics and object stores have very different workload requirements,” said Dan Vesset, vice president, Business Analytics Research, IDC. “Given the large and varied amounts of fast-moving data that needs to be stored and accessed quickly and the different requirements of end users, these workloads can be highly varied, complex and inefficient to manage if run on traditional hardware infrastructure. In order to fully embrace the promise of Big Data, it is critical that the underlying infrastructure be optimized for the workload.”

The new HP ProLiant SL4500 server series is the only solution purpose built for Big Data environments. It provides maximum performance, productivity and cost-effectiveness in an ultradense solution required by these workloads. Built on HP Converged Infrastructure, the new server offers a highly efficient design that consumes up to 50 percent less space, 61 percent less power and 31 percent lower cost while using 63 percent fewer cables.(1)

Modular architecture optimizes results for workload specific applications

The modular design of the HP ProLiant SL4500 server series offers varied compute and storage configurations that enable clients to optimize their infrastructure for a

workload-specific application, removing the need to piece together incongruent hardware for the supporting infrastructure.

With a single, cost-effective architecture, the HP ProLiant SL4500 server series also supports multiple Apache Hadoop vendors including Cloudera and Hortonworks, as well as additional software including OpenStack Cloud Software and MongoDB.

“Enterprises that leverage Cloudera’s Platform for Big Data to unlock insights across all of their data benefit from deploying infrastructure components optimized for the extreme demands of Big Data workloads,” said Amr Awadallah, chief technology officer, Cloudera. “By designing a server purpose built for Big Data, HP is offering the market a seamless new approach to processing large data sets efficiently and cost-effectively.”

HP innovation delivers greater performance and density

The HP ProLiant SL4500 Gen8 server series, with HP Smart Array technology, delivers industry-leading performance with a nearly seven times faster input/output operations per second (IOPS) than existing architectures.(2) With the smart analytics of HP SmartCache, the system will optimize storage traffic to ensure the lowest latency response and up-front investment.

Current server offerings cannot address the rapidly growing amounts of storage and servers for Big Data, forcing IT leaders to acquire additional expensive data center space. However, the new HP ProLiantSL4500 server series solves this problem by delivering industry-leading storage density of up to 240 terabytes (TB) in a single 4.3-rack-unit (U) chassis, or 2.16 petabytes (PB) with nine servers in an industry-standard 42-U rack.(3)

As a result of this extreme density, clients realize significant cost savings, greater performance and increased efficiency.

Safeguard Big Data, simplify management and support with HP ProLiant Gen8

The latest member of the HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) family, the HP SL4500 server series is built with HP ProActive Insight Architecture, which embeds intelligence and automation capabilities allowing clients to:

  • Eliminate down time and safeguard valuable data with automated data protection and HP Predictive Spare Activation, which moves data to an alternate device before failures occur.
  • Ensure maximum server productivity with HP Active Health, and automate firmware updates with HP Smart Update.
  • Leverage the industry’s most comprehensive services, support and warranty offering with HP Insight Online.
  • Lower data center power costs and improve compute per watt by up to 70 percent than previous generations with HP Intelligent Infrastructure.(4)

HP enhances scale-out server portfolio

HP also announced updates to its high-performance computing (HPC) portfolio, enabling clients to maximize the performance benefits of the latest processing technology from Intel and NVIDIA.

The HP ProLiant SL270s Gen8 server offers maximized processor density, with the ability to support up to eight Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessors or eight NVIDIA® Kepler™ graphic processing units (GPUs) per server. The HP ProLiant SL270s and SL250s Gen8 servers now support the latest NVIDIA Kepler GPUs and newly announced Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, enabling clients to select the best accelerator or coprocessor for their specific workloads.

Pricing and availability(5)

The HP ProLiant SL4500 server series in a single node configuration is available immediately worldwide for a starting price of $7,643.

The new HP ProLiant SL270s Gen8 servers will be available next month, with for a starting price of $6,166. The HP ProLiant SL250s Gen8 servers will be available with NVIDIA Kepler and Intel Xeon Phi processors early next year for a starting price of $5,659.

HP’s premier Europe, Middle East and Africa client event, HP Discover, takes place
Dec. 4-6 in Frankfurt, Germany.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.


(1)  Based on internal calculations comparing Dell PowerEdge R510 servers plus four units of Dell Power Vault MD1200 direct attach storage, which consumes seven racks, 28 servers, 112 JBOD (just a bunch of disks) enclosures, 14 networking switches, 448 cables and 79 kilowatts of power to HP ProLiant SL4500 servers consuming three racks, six networking switches, 168 cables and 31 kilowatts of power. Savings of $0.5M in acquisition costs (or CAPEX); $0.25M savings in power, cooling and distribution costs; and $0.2M savings due to rent of data center floor space over a three-year period.

(2) Based on internal testing that compares an HP ProLiant G7 server with a standard 15K SAS drive to that of HP ProLiant Gen8 server with a solid state drive.

(3) Based on internal calculations. Single-node configuration of HP SL4500 server is capable of providing up to 60 LFF (3.5-inch) SAS/SATA/SSD hard drives in a 4.3U chassis. Using the 4TB SAS/SATA hard drives that will be available early FY2013, every SL4500 server can provide 240 TB of storage capacity. A total of up to nine SL4500 servers can be installed in a single 42U rack to provide a maximum storage capacity of 2.16PB by using 540 LFF hard drives of 4TB capacity.

(4) HP internal comparison: HP ProLiant G7 to HP ProLiant G8.

(5) Estimated U.S. street prices. Actual prices may vary.

Dell Moves Fluid Data Architecture Forward with Latest Advances in Storage Efficiency, Performance and Protection

 

Dell Moves Fluid Data Architecture Forward with Latest Advances in Storage Efficiency, Performance and Protection

 

·         New Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.3 can increase performance up to 100 percent over previous versions when running enterprise workloads1 and can double bandwidth as the first storage array featuring end-to-end 16Gb Fibre Channel from server to switch to storage

 

·         New Dell PowerVault MD3 array software offers enhanced data protection, capacity utilization, and virtualization capabilities in an affordable, high performance solution

 

·         Dell data protection portfolio bolstered by new solutions, including the Dell PowerVault DL4000, providing feature-rich AppAssure software optimized in a 1U backup appliance

 

PARIS, Nov. 15, 2012 — At its second EMEA Dell Storage Forum customer and partner event, Dell today unveiled a series of end-to-end storage portfolio updates designed to advance the Fluid Data architecture and to help customers further optimize data at every point in its lifecycle.

 

“The nature of IT and what a data center should do for an organization is changing rapidly as customers face multiple and often competing models of how technology is delivered from client to cloud to converged,” said Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage.Dell is best positioned with an end-to-end storage architecture that can optimize data at every point in its lifecycle through intelligence and automation. Dell’s Fluid Data Architecture enables new capabilities that power the data center, so customers can drive real business results.”

 

New Dell Compellent and PowerVault MD3 Software Increases Performance and Automation

 

Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.3 array software unveiled today offers enhanced scalability and performance for Dell Compellent arrays. Compellent SC8000 controllers with Storage Center 6.3 software can increase performance up to 100 percent over previous versions when running enterprise workloads.1 Additionally, with this release, Dell is the first storage provider to announce end-to-end 16Gb Fibre Channel capability — from server to switch to storage — doubling bandwidth and speeding access to business critical applications and data.

 

Designed for medium to large enterprises and cloud computing, Dell Compellent arrays offer best in class automated tiering, advanced data protection and superior ease of use. These features combine with a highly scalable, modular design that enables users to update storage software at no additional cost and easily expand without requiring a “rip and replace” of their existing infrastructure. According to a new IDC White Paper, commissioned by Dell, Compellent installations had almost twice as long a productive life span than non-Dell storage solutions with organizations replacing Compellent every 6.9 years compared to 3.5 years for their other storage environments.2

 

Additional enterprise enhancements from Storage Center 6.3 announced today include:

 

·         Synchronous replication enhancements that can improve resiliency for data recovery and provide multi-site replication flexibility designed to reduce recovery time and recovery point objectives;

·         Expanded Microsoft integration with new Windows Server 2012 support;

·         Enhanced security and reduced administration time with Active Directory and LDAP support that automates and integrates Compellent storage with a corporate directory to enable a single authentication and authorization process for granting access;

·         Improved federal government security by supporting USGv6/IPv6 requirements for a wide range of available IP addresses; and,

·         The ability to intelligently alert and recommend placement of volumes across multiple arrays based on proactive performance and capacity monitoring.

 

New Dell PowerVault MD3 software enhancements offer enhanced data protection, performance, capacity and virtualization capabilities while designed to maintain up to 99.999 percent availability for these affordable, high performance arrays.

 

Data protection enhancements include dynamic disk pools that simplify disk management and improve rebuild performance by distributing data across all drives, decreasing significant recovery time of drive failures. In addition to current Fibre Channel replication capabilities, new IP-based remote asynchronous replication protects against site failures, improves application speeds, and increases distance support.

 

New PowerVault MD3 software application integration and efficiency capabilities include VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) support, which allows customers to offload certain storage related tasks from the server to PowerVault arrays. New thin provisioning capabilities enable arrays to automatically allocate storage as needed for simplified and cost-effective expansion of capacity.

 

Dell Boosts Data Protection Portfolio to Simplify Data Backup and Recovery

 

Dell’s growing data protection portfolio enables customers of all sizes to attain unmatched data and application protection and recovery capability times for virtual, physical and cloud environments.  Dell provides complete backup, replication and recovery solutions designed to maximize data efficiency, improve IT agility and help ensure business resiliency. Additions to the Dell data protection portfolio include:

 

·         Dell PowerVault DL4000Optimized for small to medium enterprises and remote offices, the first backup appliance based on Dell AppAssure software provides a fast and complete backup and disaster recovery solution for business-critical applications and data with seamless integration of software and system management. With 5.5 terabytes of internal storage capacity, this 1U turnkey appliance offers established snapshot, replication, de-duplication and compression software for efficient use of backup capacity. Users can benefit from hosting two virtual standby machines that protect critical applications for up to two servers, offering quick disaster recovery.

 

·         Quest NetVault Backup 9.0 New Quest data protection software integrates with NetVault Extended Architecture (NetVault XA), featuring a new graphical user interface and a set of shared services to unite multiple Quest data protection technologies for simpler management. The software enables mid- to large-sized organizations to simplify data protection while protecting critical applications in physical and virtual heterogeneous environments. NetVault’s cross-platform capabilities are expanded to Windows Server 2012 and Novell Open Enterprise Server 11, while Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and VMware vSphere® enhancements offer improved functionality, performance and scalability. The addition of native replication to the NetVault SmartDisk deduplication solution helps streamline offsite data storage and disaster recovery.

 

·         Dell PowerVault DL2300New enterprise-class data protection appliance combines Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers with CommVault Simpana 9 modern data protection software to offer large enterprises with data backup, recovery, replication, archiving and de-duplication for both physical and virtual servers in one easy-to-set-up, pre-tested solution. The new appliance incorporates latest generation processor and memory capabilities to optimize de-duplication database configurations for higher backup performance. Users can save administrative time with built-in, policy-based automation for managing backup and archiving.

 

Additional Quotes:

 

“Dell Compellent storage plays a critical role in our IT infrastructure, and we continue to look forward to new enhancements and features that help us meet enterprise level storage demands,” said Dan Marbes, Lead Systems Engineer, Associated Bank. “The opportunity to gain up to two times the performance when running our applications means faster access to important information when our users need it. We are also eagerly anticipating the integration of Active Directory authentication to more efficiently manage access to these resources.”

 

“We've relied on AppAssure for recovery and peace of mind for years on a variety of storage platforms,” said Michael Rapp, information security officer, Center for Information Technology in Education, College of Education, University of Houston. “Dell’s integration of this data protection software into a purpose-built platform could make it even easier for customers to deploy an AppAssure-optimized solution with a minimal amount of set up and configuration work.”

 

Availability:

·         Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.3 has planned availability for beta in early 2013 and general availability in Q2 2013.

·         Dell PowerVault MD3 software enhancements and Dell PowerVault DL2300 are now available.

·         Dell Quest NetVault Backup 9.0 has planned availability in December 2012.

·         Dell PowerVault DL4000 has planned availability in Q1 2013.

 

Additional Information:

·         Dell Storage Forum Online Press Kit holds solution details, images, videos and more.

·         Dell Storage Forum on Twitter

·         Dell Storage Forum on Facebook

 

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.Dell.ca.

 

 

Dell World

Join us at Dell World 2012 The Power to Do More. Technology professionals will learn from one another and identify key challenges and opportunities connected to the top forces changing business today. Learn more at www.DellWorld.com or follow #DellWorld on Twitter.

 

Dell, Compellent, PowerVault, AppAssure, Quest NetVault, and DX Object Storage are trademarks of Dell Inc.  Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

 

 

 

Media Contacts:

Janet Fabri

Dell

+1 (416) 758-3398

Janet_fabri@dell.com

Melissa Lee

Cohn & Wolfe

+1 (416) 924-5700

Melissa.lee@cohnwolfe.ca

 

 

 

 

1Source: Dell testing performed on dual SC8000 controllers running OLTP workloads using IOmeter with a 100% random 70/30 read/write mix and 4K sector transfer sizes. Testing using pre-release Storage Center code version 6.3.1 versus 6.1.2 code.

 

2Source: “The Business Value of Dell EqualLogic and Compellent Primary Storage Solutions,” an October 2012 IDC white paper commissioned by Dell.

























































CSA Group to Develop Four New Standards Addressing Climate Change Impact in Canada's Far North on Behalf of Standards Council of Canada

CSA Group to Develop Four New Standards Addressing Climate Change Impact in Canada's Far North on Behalf of Standards Council of Canada

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Nov 14, 2012) - CSA Group, a leading provider of standards development, training and advisory solutions, global product testing and certification, and product performance evaluation, today announces that it has been selected by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) to develop four new standards to help address the impact of climate change in Northern Canada as part of the Northern Infrastructure Standardization Initiative (NISI).

NISI is a joint project being led by SCC with support from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) that is intended to adapt critical codes and standards to address the effects of climate change on new infrastructure, as well as retrofits, maintenance and repairs to existing infrastructure.

Northern infrastructure is highly vulnerable to global climate change and must contend with emerging issues such as melting permafrost that causes damage to buildings, as well as changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns that are leading to denser, heavier, wetter snow accumulation on structures in the winter.

"CSA Group has actively been researching the role standards and codes play in helping to mitigate the risk associated with changing climate and its impact on infrastructure in various regions of Canada since 2005," says Bonnie Rose, President, Standards, CSA Group. "From the impact of prairie drought to increased hurricanes in the East to less ice in the North, CSA Group has been examining how these changes will affect existing infrastructure and new construction standards. This collective knowledge will prove invaluable in developing new standards for Canada''s far northern cities, towns and aboriginal communities." 

In the Northwest Territories alone, it is estimated that adapting buildings to accommodate the impact of climate change could cost $230 million, or more than $5,000 for every resident of the jurisdiction1. The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy suggested that the economic impact on Canada could reach $5 billion per year by 2020. However, municipalities that begin assessing their vulnerability to climate-change impacts that are already occurring and develop responses that help protect their citizens, the local environment and the local economy, could help save Canadians billions of dollars.

"SCC is committed to mobilizing the expertise of Canada''s national standardization network to identify solutions that will address the unique vulnerabilities of Canada''s northern infrastructure," says John Walter, CEO, Standards Council of Canada. "Adapting standards and codes to a northern climate will bring tangible value to the many Canadians that live and work in Canada''s North."

CSA Group will develop standards in the following areas as part of NISI:

  • Thermosyphon-supported foundations for new buildings in permafrost;
  • Moderating the effects of permafrost degradation on existing buildings;
  • Changing snow loads in the North; and,
  • Community drainage system planning, design and maintenance.

1 Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Climate Change Adaptation http://www.fcm.ca/home/issues/environment/climate-change-adaptation.htm

About CSA Group

CSA Group is an independent, not-for-profit membership association dedicated to safety, social good and sustainability. Its knowledge and expertise encompass standards development; training and advisory solutions; global testing and certification services across key business areas including hazardous location and industrial, plumbing and construction, medical, safety and technology, appliances and gas, alternative energy, lighting and sustainability; as well as consumer product evaluation services. The CSA certification mark appears on billions of products worldwide. For more information about CSA Group visit www.csagroup.org.

Version française disponible

Contact:
CSA Group
Anthony Toderian
Manager, Corporate Affairs
416-747-2620
anthony.toderian@csagroup.org
www.csagroup.org