HP Enhances Partner Program

HP has announced enhancements to its PartnerOne program to help its business partners accelerate growth and profitability and strengthen their competitive differentiation in the market. The changes will take effect on November 1 and include a simplified structure that offers a predictable and profitable compensation model. It streamlines certification requirements across all regions and multiple HP business units, including HP Enterprise Group, HP Software, and HP Printing and Personal Systems. More

IBM Announces New Service Center, 300 New German Language Jobs, in Magdeburg, Germany

IBM has announced a new service center in Magdeburg, Germany, along with plans to create up to 300 German-language IT roles over the next three years, to deliver a range of technology services to German-speaking clients.The new service center will provide application development, application maintenance, and systems integration services that address the increasing demand for flexible software capability to harness the benefits of emerging Big Data, cloud, and mobile business technologies. More

Holland’s Largest Online Retailer to Use IBM Big Data Analytics Cloud Suite for Better Pricing Management

Wehkamp.nl, the largest online retailer in the Netherlands, will use IBM cloud-based merchandising analytics to manage markdown pricing to better meet customer demand and improve profitability. With the addition of this service, wehkamp.nl is using the full set of IBM’s Cloud Suites for the C-Suite of marketing and merchandising solutions to provide a more personalized shopping experience, improved overall service leaves, and better margin and revenue growth. More

Dell Software Gains Product Awards, Finalist Nominations

Dell Software has been recognized with recently announced product awards and finalist nominations, including three Stevie Award finalists in the 2013 American Business Awards. Dell Software also received awards in this year’s “Network Product Guide” 8th Annual Hot Companies and Best Product Awards. Storage Magazine named Dell AppAssure the top midrange backup and recovery software solution in its 2013 Quality Awards competition. Dell SonicWALL earned the top rating of Recommend in the NSS Labs 2013 Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map and got a Silver Award in the Tech Awards Circle 2013 enterprise Hardware category. More

Microsoft Releases Windows 8.1 Preview

Microsoft has announced immediate availability of a preview of the next Windows OS update, Windows 8.1, at its developer-focused Build conference.  Microsoft officials discussed the opportunities for developers to build compelling apps on Win 8 and emphasized how commonality across the Windows platform simplifies development and updating and increases the opportunity. More

Cisco Unveils Application-Centric Data Center Network Infrastructure

Cisco has announced a new data center networking architecture designed to support the era of application-centric infrastructure at Cisco Live in Orlando. The new network architecture is intended to help data centers better address the demands of new and current applications in the Cloud era. Based in part on technology from Cisco’s investment in Insieme Networks, this represents a fundamental shift in its network technology, Cisco said, providing a simpler operational model, scalable secure infrastructure, and optimized cost for delivering business applications to end-users. Wikibon’s Stuart Miniman, however, says that this is purely visionware and will take years at best to fulfill.  More

Cisco Networks to Power Azerbaijan’s e-School Project

Cisco has announced that 50 schools involved in Azerbaijan’s e-School project have deployed a unified distance learning system based on Cisco Enterprise Networks. The platform provides highly secure and reliable access to data at any time, in any place, through any device. It opens equal education opportunities to students and gives teachers resources for embracing best methodologies and practices as well as for extending education problems beyond school campuses. More

Broadcom Announces StrataXGS 10 Gbit Switch for Mobile Backhaul

Broadcom has announced the StrataXGS 10 Gigabit switch to support network transition from 1 to 10 Gbps Ethernet to manage the increased capacity demands from mobile data traffic and escalating video traffic. The switch delivers advanced carrier-grade traffic control and real-time monitoring and an integrated Arm-based CPU subsystem, enabling high density cellular networks to provide a more than 2X increase in user capacity. More

3 NaviSite Cloud Services Accepted in UK G-Cloud III

The UK government has accepted the NaviSite One (desktop), Intelligent Storage, Share & Vault, and Dynamic Compute (IaaS) services as part of the new Government G-Cloud III program. This allows local UK authorities, government departments, and other public sector organizations to subscribe to these services through the government’s CloudStore. The government Web portal now provides access to more than 700 suppliers and 7,000 services. More

SAP Provides Testing Bundle for Applications on SAP HANA

SAP AG has announced a new solution bundle that provides customers with a structured approach to testing applications on SAP HANA prior to deployment. The SAP HANA application testing by HP bundle is being resold globally by SAP and will give further assurance to customers that their entire IT environment is finely tuned to take full advantage of SAP HANA. More