IBM Computers

IRS Computers Can’t Handle Gates’ Taxes

2006-02-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Think you have trouble with your taxes? Well, I’m not going to feel sorry for the richest man in the world, but apparently his tax return is so complex that it requires a special computer, and because of that, if the info gets on the wrong computer, he erroneously gets notices of non-payment.

“Their normal computers can’t deal with the numbers,” he (Gates) said of the hapless taxmen. “So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven’t paid something, when really it is just on the wrong computer.”

According to an IRS spokeman, the agency’s main computers do not use the Windows operating system. IBM designed the original processing system for the IRS in the 1960s, which was largely tape and disk driven. Believe it or not the same system is used today, processing the bulk of America’s tax returns including, presumably at one time at least, that of Gates. Source:

Forbes
We Say: Perhaps it’s time for a hardware and software upgrade? I wonder if Ellison gets his own computer, and if not, if he’s jealous of that as well?

IBM exec urges companies to rethink innovation

2006-02-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

It's probably not a shock to learn that Procter & Gamble outsources its computer support, but what about its Ivory soap? It turns out that Ivory, the company's oldest brand, isn't manufactured in a P&G factory.
What might even be more surprising is that P&G has opened up all 28,000 of the patents in its portfolio to license by other companies — even rival Clorox.
Those steps are why P&G is showcased as a company that's learned to let go of old ways of doing business in a new book by a top IBM executive.

"Let Go to Grow: Escaping the Commodity Trap," by Linda S. Sanford, an IBM senior vice president, with Dave Taylor, an author and professor, is a handbook for corporations that want to compete amid the forces of globalization.
Chappaqua resident Sanford, 52, is leading the Armonk-based computer giant's own transformation into a more nimble player as the Internet brings competitors from around the world as close as a computer click away.

"The fact that the world is so global, so flat and connected through networks is having a major impact on businesses and how they survive and grow in a commoditized world," Sanford said.
Citing examples from corporations such as General Electric, eBay, Dell, Toyota, Southwest, UPS, FedEx, BMW and IBM, Sanford makes a case for business leaders to look outside their own walls for innovation.

"You want to be able to shore up skills and talents around your core capabilities and leverage other skills and talents wherever they reside around the world," Sanford said. "There is no corner of the globe that has the corner on talent anymore."
Sanford said she was influenced by "The World is Flat," the 2005 book by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

On the opening page of Friedman's book, he describes playing golf at a course in Bangalore when a friend urges him to aim his shot at the nearby glass-and-steel buildings of Microsoft and IBM — a scene that illustrates how much major U.S. companies have invested in India.
A central theme in both Friedman's and Sanford's books is how the Internet makes it possible for intellectual tasks to be performed anywhere.
Sanford gives the example of Eli Lilly, which created an innovation center on the Web and posts research and development problems that qualified scientists around the world are invited to solve.

"Pharmaceutical giant as they are, they recognize that they don't necessarily have the corner on innovation," Sanford said.
The 6,000 registered scientists from 125 countries are paid up to $100,000 for their input if they solve the problem.
"The success rate has been far, far higher than the in-house performance and at one-sixth the cost," Sanford said.

Businesses are realizing that it's not desirable or practical to control every aspect of their operations anymore. At one point in time, car makers even mined their own iron ore for steel.
"Clearly, that's not affordable today," Sanford said.
Letting go of control isn't easy. "What is the biggest inhibitor? It's the culture of an organization. Most of us have grown up in the world of command and control. Letting go is not intuitive," Sanford said.

IBM's own transformation from a manufacturer of computers to a purveyor of technological expertise took bringing in an outsider as chairman and chief executive. Louis V. Gerstner Jr. and his successor, Samuel Palmisano, have led IBM's rebirth as the biggest consulting company in the world.
In the process, IBM shed the hard disk drive business it pioneered and sold its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer.
When IBM started outsourcing manufacturing, it was a "shock to the system," Sanford said, but today the philosophy is ingrained.

For example, the company's Global Services arm acts like an outsourcer within IBM.
There used to be 128 chief information officers running the tech support for various departments in IBM, Sanford said. Today, there is just one CIO, and he doesn't even run the data centers, which fall under the purview of Global Services.
In addition, IBM outsources its human resources administration to Fidelity.
"It frees our people in human resources to focus on compensation strategy instead of worrying about administration," she said. "Core to us is talent. We are people-based. We need to be sure that HR focuses on identifying, contacting and retaining talent, so we put the bulk of our resources there."

Sanford doesn't argue for outsourcing as a means to just save money.
Pointing to Amazon.com, which owes at least part of its success to timely delivery of goods by partners such as UPS, Sanford said today's outsourcing deals are all about creating "value webs."
"Outsourcing isn't the point of a value web. I make that distinction because I think it's important. Creating a value web means drawing on the strength of other companies, and letting them draw on your strength. That's different than giving something to someone else because they can do it cheaper," she said.

Sanford acknowledges that an IBM executive writing a book in favor of outsourcing is a bit like Ben & Jerry's writing a book extolling the virtues of eating more ice cream.
"Clearly, we have the experience, we have the skills and we have the capabilities in our consulting services that can help customers," she said. "Yes, I am telling the story and saying, 'We can help you do this.' "

Sanford, one of the highest-ranking women at Big Blue, said she decided to write the book in part because so many customers have asked her to share IBM's own story.
About half of Sanford's time is spent meeting with customers, which means countless hours on airplanes. Sanford traveled about 74,000 miles last year. "I had a lot of time to reflect on what I was seeing and observing around the world," she said.

Sanford said she wrote on weekends, evenings and during vacation time.
She wrote down her thoughts and her collaborator helped make them easy to understand — as well as weeding out those three-letter acronyms beloved by all IBMers.
"Dave was very instrumental in helping me make sure that it made sense to the reader," Sanford said.
Sanford is one of just a handful of IBM executives who have written general interest business books.

• Longtime CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr., son of the company founder, wrote two books, "A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas That Helped Build IBM" and "Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond."
• "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround" was former chief Gerstner's story of his role leading IBM from the brink of bankruptcy in 1993 to its resurgence when he left in 2002.
• John R. Patrick, a former vice president of Internet technology at IBM, discusses the importance of the Internet in "Net Attitude."
• Ossining resident William J. Holstein, editor-in-chief of Chief Executive Magazine, said Sanford's book will be useful to corporate executives.

"This is one of the core challenges that everybody is wrestling with: What do we do that's really special — which used to be called core competence — versus what can be outsourced," he said.
He said examples of IBM's own transformation are compelling.
"They seem to live what they preach. The fact that they got out of the PC business says that they didn't see an advantage. They are concentrating their energies where they have an advantage, which is in services," he said.
"Obviously, this book is an intellectual basis for people making decisions that over the long term would help IBM's business. There is no question that there is an IBM agenda here. You would expect nothing less," Holstein said.

The trend toward outsourcing, which has received a lot of attention since the 2004 presidential election, is still in the early stages, from Holstein's view.
"It's not over by any stretch of the imagination. This is why her book touches on what I think should be one of the major debates in the country: How do we as Americans move up in the chain to be able to do more sophisticated things that can't be moved to Hyderabad," he said.
To workers alarmed by the thought of their jobs moving to India or elsewhere in the world as companies let go of work that used to be performed in the United States, Sanford says: "We are a country built on entrepreneurship and innovation. If you go back over the centuries, we have constantly come up with the next new innovation. We have to make sure our educational system supports that."

It's probably not a shock to learn that Procter & Gamble outsources its computer support, but what about its Ivory soap? It turns out that Ivory, the company's oldest brand, isn't manufactured in a P&G factory.
What might even be more surprising is that P&G has opened up all 28,000 of the patents in its portfolio to license by other companies — even rival Clorox.
Those steps are why P&G is showcased as a company that's learned to let go of old ways of doing business in a new book by a top IBM executive.
"Let Go to Grow: Escaping the Commodity Trap," by Linda S. Sanford, an IBM senior vice president, with Dave Taylor, an author and professor, is a handbook for corporations that want to compete amid the forces of globalization.
Chappaqua resident Sanford, 52, is leading the Armonk-based computer giant's own transformation into a more nimble player as the Internet brings competitors from around the world as close as a computer click away.
"The fact that the world is so global, so flat and connected through networks is having a major impact on businesses and how they survive and grow in a commoditized world," Sanford said.
Citing examples from corporations such as General Electric, eBay, Dell, Toyota, Southwest, UPS, FedEx, BMW and IBM, Sanford makes a case for business leaders to look outside their own walls for innovation.
"You want to be able to shore up skills and talents around your core capabilities and leverage other skills and talents wherever they reside around the world," Sanford said. "There is no corner of the globe that has the corner on talent anymore."
Sanford said she was influenced by "The World is Flat," the 2005 book by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.
On the opening page of Friedman's book, he describes playing golf at a course in Bangalore when a friend urges him to aim his shot at the nearby glass-and-steel buildings of Microsoft and IBM — a scene that illustrates how much major U.S. companies have invested in India.
A central theme in both Friedman's and Sanford's books is how the Internet makes it possible for intellectual tasks to be performed anywhere.
Sanford gives the example of Eli Lilly, which created an innovation center on the Web and posts research and development problems that qualified scientists around the world are invited to solve.
"Pharmaceutical giant as they are, they recognize that they don't necessarily have the corner on innovation," Sanford said.
The 6,000 registered scientists from 125 countries are paid up to $100,000 for their input if they solve the problem.
"The success rate has been far, far higher than the in-house performance and at one-sixth the cost," Sanford said.
Businesses are realizing that it's not desirable or practical to control every aspect of their operations anymore. At one point in time, car makers even mined their own iron ore for steel.
"Clearly, that's not affordable today," Sanford said.
Letting go of control isn't easy. "What is the biggest inhibitor? It's the culture of an organization. Most of us have grown up in the world of command and control. Letting go is not intuitive," Sanford said.
IBM's own transformation from a manufacturer of computers to a purveyor of technological expertise took bringing in an outsider as chairman and chief executive. Louis V. Gerstner Jr. and his successor, Samuel Palmisano, have led IBM's rebirth as the biggest consulting company in the world.
In the process, IBM shed the hard disk drive business it pioneered and sold its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer.
When IBM started outsourcing manufacturing, it was a "shock to the system," Sanford said, but today the philosophy is ingrained.
For example, the company's Global Services arm acts like an outsourcer within IBM.
There used to be 128 chief information officers running the tech support for various departments in IBM, Sanford said. Today, there is just one CIO, and he doesn't even run the data centers, which fall under the purview of Global Services.
In addition, IBM outsources its human resources administration to Fidelity.
"It frees our people in human resources to focus on compensation strategy instead of worrying about administration," she said. "Core to us is talent. We are people-based. We need to be sure that HR focuses on identifying, contacting and retaining talent, so we put the bulk of our resources there."
Sanford doesn't argue for outsourcing as a means to just save money.
Pointing to Amazon.com, which owes at least part of its success to timely delivery of goods by partners such as UPS, Sanford said today's outsourcing deals are all about creating "value webs."
"Outsourcing isn't the point of a value web. I make that distinction because I think it's important. Creating a value web means drawing on the strength of other companies, and letting them draw on your strength. That's different than giving something to someone else because they can do it cheaper," she said.
Sanford acknowledges that an IBM executive writing a book in favor of outsourcing is a bit like Ben & Jerry's writing a book extolling the virtues of eating more ice cream.
"Clearly, we have the experience, we have the skills and we have the capabilities in our consulting services that can help customers," she said. "Yes, I am telling the story and saying, 'We can help you do this.' "
Sanford, one of the highest-ranking women at Big Blue, said she decided to write the book in part because so many customers have asked her to share IBM's own story.
About half of Sanford's time is spent meeting with customers, which means countless hours on airplanes. Sanford traveled about 74,000 miles last year. "I had a lot of time to reflect on what I was seeing and observing around the world," she said.
Sanford said she wrote on weekends, evenings and during vacation time.
She wrote down her thoughts and her collaborator helped make them easy to understand — as well as weeding out those three-letter acronyms beloved by all IBMers.
"Dave was very instrumental in helping me make sure that it made sense to the reader," Sanford said.
Sanford is one of just a handful of IBM executives who have written general interest business books.
• Longtime CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr., son of the company founder, wrote two books, "A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas That Helped Build IBM" and "Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond."
• "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround" was former chief Gerstner's story of his role leading IBM from the brink of bankruptcy in 1993 to its resurgence when he left in 2002.
• John R. Patrick, a former vice president of Internet technology at IBM, discusses the importance of the Internet in "Net Attitude."
• Ossining resident William J. Holstein, editor-in-chief of Chief Executive Magazine, said Sanford's book will be useful to corporate executives.
"This is one of the core challenges that everybody is wrestling with: What do we do that's really special — which used to be called core competence — versus what can be outsourced," he said.
He said examples of IBM's own transformation are compelling.
"They seem to live what they preach. The fact that they got out of the PC business says that they didn't see an advantage. They are concentrating their energies where they have an advantage, which is in services," he said.
"Obviously, this book is an intellectual basis for people making decisions that over the long term would help IBM's business. There is no question that there is an IBM agenda here. You would expect nothing less," Holstein said.
The trend toward outsourcing, which has received a lot of attention since the 2004 presidential election, is still in the early stages, from Holstein's view.
"It's not over by any stretch of the imagination. This is why her book touches on what I think should be one of the major debates in the country: How do we as Americans move up in the chain to be able to do more sophisticated things that can't be moved to Hyderabad," he said.
To workers alarmed by the thought of their jobs moving to India or elsewhere in the world as companies let go of work that used to be performed in the United States, Sanford says: "We are a country built on entrepreneurship and innovation. If you go back over the centuries, we have constantly come up with the next new innovation. We have to make sure our educational system supports that."

www.thejournalnews.com

Iowa State University supercomputer to help decipher corn genome

2006-01-31T12:53:00.000-08:00

By David Pitt
AMES, Iowa – Scientists at Iowa State University are using one of the nation's 10 most powerful computers to help decipher the corn genome, a project that could allow them to expand the plant's uses in plastics, fuel and fiber.
To determine how a corn genome – the basic genetic structure of the plant – is put together, scientists must assemble more than 60 million bits of genetic material.
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Scientists are planning to use the $1.25 million IBM BlueGene supercomputer, unveiled Monday, which has the equivalent processing power of more than 2,000 home computers and a storage capacity more than 1,000 times greater. It performs as many as 5.7 trillion calculations per second, said Srinivas Aluru, professor of electrical and computer engineering.
The computer's speed enables scientists to shorten the time of processing data that would have previously taken two to three months to just days, Aluru said.

Understanding the genome will allow plant biologists to “build a better corn plant that, for example, produces biodegradable plastic or ethanol,” said Patrick Schnable, an agronomy professor and director of the Center for Plant Genomics at Iowa State University.
Iowa State is one of four universities working on the corn genome project, which is scheduled take about three years.

The BlueGene/L computer is the 73rd most powerful supercomputer in the world, according to a list compiled by scientists at the University of Mannheim in Germany, the University of Tennessee and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
It was financed with a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and $650,000 from the university.

Besides the corn genome project, scientists hope to use the supercomputer to help understand protein networks in organisms, which can lead to breakthroughs in disease research.
Such networks can involve 30,000 proteins interacting with each other, too many calculations for the typical computer to perform in adequate time, said Bob Jernigan, professor of biochemistry and biophysics.

“It's the unavailability of computers of this magnitude that limits many projects in engineering and computer science. This can have an important influence on all kinds of research,” he said.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/

Iowa State University supercomputer to help decipher corn genome

2006-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

Global rise in cyber crime predicted by IBM

2006-01-31T12:47:00.000-08:00

IBM is predicting a global rise in cyber crime and warns that New Zealand is not immune.
In its annual Global Business Security Index Report, IBM predicts a rise in professional, organised attacks. Security Practice Leader, John Martin, says it's no longer amateur virus writers threatening industries and individuals.

He warns that businesses will also have to be on the look out for bot-nets -- networks of computers hijacked by third parties, who use them to commit online crime.
In the past, online criminals created botnets using thousands of computers but now they're more stealthy and harder to detect.

But Mr Martin says computer users will still be the easiest point of attack for cyber criminals and warns users to be on their guard.
He also says criminals will make greater use of wireless devices to break into corporate systems.

www.radionz.co.nz

Region sends four to world 'think fest' on innovation

2006-01-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

(www.insidebayarea.com).- What does Emeryville businessman Alan Kramer have in common with China's vice premier Zeng Peiyan, German Chancellor Angela Markel and the chief executives of the world's largest companies?
They are all among the people who gathered this past week at the annual "think fest" known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Kramer, founder of biometrics startup UPEK Inc., was among the 2,340 of the world's most influential people attending the forum, along with Richmond recycling inventor Michael Biddle, founder of MBA Polymers Inc.; Emeryville biotechnologist Jay Keasling, founder of Amyris Biotechnologies Inc.; and Jay Wohlgemuth, co-founder of South San Francisco's XDx Inc.

Kramer, Biddle, Keasling and Wohlgemuth are not household names along the lines of Bill Gates and Bono — two newsmakers in recent World Economic Forum meetings.

Yet the founders of these local companies were invited to the globe's most prestigious business and political meeting because they are "technology pioneers," according to the World Economic Forum. The forum named 36 companies from around the globe as technology pioneers because they are "involved in the development of life-changing technology innovation and have the potential for long-term impact on business and society." Twelve of the 36 pioneers are from California.

"I'm excited just to be recognized on that scale and be in the presence of those types of leaders," Kramer of UPEK said during an interview before the forum began. "But also being there and hearing what people are talking about might open up other ideas for our company," he said. Though he speaks humbly, Kramer does not dispute that the company he formed is a technology pioneer.

"In a matter of only a few years, UPEK succeeded to drive a technology considered essentially experimental to one quickly gaining mainstream acceptance" from major electronics companies, he said.
UPEK pioneered a way to detect the subtle changes in the electrical field emanating from human skin to create a fingerprint swipe security system that is much smaller, lighter, cheaper and more reliable than fingerprint security systems that have existed before.

In this day when incidents of data stolen from computers are frequent and identity theft is a common scare, the biometric sensors from UPEK fairly quickly found a market.

IBM puts them in its ThinkPad T43 notebook computers. Fujitsu puts them in cell phones sold in Japan. Government agencies use them at security checks for building entrances.

The older fingerprint security technology used optical scanners that essentially take digital pictures of fingerprints and match them with stored pictures of those allowed access to a device or building. But these systems have always been somewhat large — too large to install in notebook computers for which lightness is a characteristic.
UPEK's sensors use analog technology or analog chips to measure changes in the electrical field that emanates from human skin. The sensor, therefore, detects the ridges and valleys of the groves on a fingertip.

Previously, the idea of putting an optical scanner in a laptop or cell phone was blocked by the added size and weight — and thus inconvenience. UPEK's biometric scanner is only 3/4- by 1/2-inch large. Last year, IBM sold 1 million of its ThinkPads with the biometric sensor. UPEK also signed deals with laptop makers Sony, Acer and NEC.

Over in Richmond, Biddle and MBA Polymers Inc., have developed a way to recycle engineered plastics and metals from computers, refrigerators and other electronic appliances and complex waste. Since billions of pounds of computers, cell phones, televisions and the like are thrown away every year — and to date complex plastics have not been recyclable — MBA Polymers meets a huge worldwide need.

"We start with a mixture of shredded material, which has both plastics and non-plastics," explained MBA Polymers President Richard McCombs. "So the first process is to separate out non-plastics and end up with a pure plastic stream. The succeeding steps are to find a physical property of each type of plastic by which that plastic can be identified and separated, like density."

It is the plastics separation that is the real breakthrough in the automated separation system that Biddleand colleagues invented.

"I think the need for our technology is dramatic at this point," McCombs said, noting that both Japan and the European Union recently passed laws requiring the recycling of all electronic appliances. "Billions of pounds of electronics are being discarded each year."

Being invited to the World Economic Forum is "obviously quite an honor," McCombs said. Biddle, the founder and chief executive of MBA, was out of the country and not available for comment.

Back in Emeryville, Amyris Biotechnologies was chosen as a technology pioneer because it found a way to use engineered or synthetic microbes to create compounds used to fight disease but which have hitherto been found only in nature.

Its current project is creating a bioengineered microbe to produce an anti-malaria drug that resembles artemisinin — an expensive drug made from the wormwood plant and not affordable for many Third World people.
"Malaria kills approximately one million children annually," Keasling said in a statement.

Amyris is using its technology to boost the supply and decrease the cost of drugs needed to treat individuals in countries with endemic rates of malaria.

South San Francisco-based XDx is a privately held molecular diagnostics company.

Its AlloMap technology enables doctors to determine with a simple blood test whether a patient will reject a transplanted heart, according to a forum press release about the technology pioneers.

Earlier this month, XDx said it raised $26.5 million in financing, with investors including Duff, Ackerman & Goodrich; Intel Capital; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and Texas Pacific Group Ventures.

Thales announces rugged 6U VME clone

2006-01-30T17:19:00.000-08:00

(www.eetasia.com).- Thales disclosed that they are teaming to produce a fully rugged version of the current generation PowerPC blade server called the PowerNode5. PowerNode5 is a rugged 6U VME clone of the IBM JS20 blade design. This new product provides a very high level of performance with a full binary compatibility with IBM JS20 blades servers, in a form factor fully adapted to any of today's embedded systems requirements, said the company.

"This product aims at applications being developed on the standard IBM blade server and needing to be deployed in tougher conditions. The Thales expertise in the rugged domain was successfully put to test to overcome the challenge of fitting such powerful silicon into the existing 6U VME envelope. Unlike some other vendors, we at Thales, believe that the incremental nature of the VME ecosystem is not yet over and that leading edge processor technology can still fit side to side with legacy equipments. This new product is here to prove it," said Thales Computers' GM Alain Albarello.

The PowerNode5 is available in standard convection cooled and rugged conduction cooled versions for harsh environment applications. PowerNode5 features two IBM 970FX processors clocked at 1.6GHz—even the rugged conduction cooled version—and up to 2GB DDR SDRAM ECC memory with a 6.4GBps memory peak bandwidth. The end-user can initially develop applications on a low-cost, standard IBM blade server and easily port the application to the PowerNode5 system. Additionally, the PowerNode5 offers a smooth migration path from existing PPC G4-based platforms with customers able to easily and efficiently preserve their legacy software investments.

"This new product retains full compatibility with all customer applications which were designed around our specific software to fit large multi-processor Linux based architectures. This software insulation layer remains the same on this newer product and this is excellent news for all our customers with strong legacy requirements," added Valirie Bertheau, VP of marketing for Thales Computers.

The product is available as a board component (the PowerNode5) or pre-integrated in large systems (PowerMP5) with full data transport and management software based on standards such as MPI and HTTP, and runs Red Hat Linux or Wind River VxWorks. In addition, the PowerNode5 features an on-board serial RapidIO switch fabric that allows the end-user to build a powerful and scalable signal processing calculator based on the PowerNode5 building block as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports. Pricing for the PowerNode5 starts at $11,260 subject to specifications.

Asia takes knock as US tech giants disappoint

2006-01-19T16:51:00.000-08:00

19.01.06
Weak results from technology leaders Intel and Yahoo! are expected to mean bad news for global sharemarkets, raising concerns that tech spending this year could be less than expected. Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, and internet media giant Yahoo! posted results that did not meet expectations, sending shares of both sharply lower and hitting stocks across the sector.

Shares of other marquee tech names also fell: Google shares fell 3.4 per cent, Apple Computer nearly 2 per cent, Dell 3.6 per cent and eBay 3.1 per cent, all in after-hours trade. The first impact outside the US was seen in Asia, where shares of major chip-related stocks fell across the board yesterday as investors fretted about the disappointing results from Intel.

According to Reuters Estimates, the first 49 companies of the S&P-500 that have reported fourth-quarter results have so far collectively missed average Wall Street revenue estimates by 0.25 per cent. Intel suffered from weak demand for processors used in desktop computers and weak sales in the Americas. Revenue at Yahoo! was just below expectations, with higher operating costs crimping profit growth. "The worry with Intel is many investors are expecting higher corporate spending to offset potential weakness in consumer spending for GDP growth this year," said Steve Neimeth, portfolio manager for AUG SunAmerica Asset Management in Jersey City, New Jersey. "If Intel's miss is due to lower corporate spending, this could bode very poorly for economic growth in 2006," he said. IBM, the world's largest computer maker and computer services provider, for its part posted a quarterly profit that rose a higher-than-expected 13 per cent, aided by its consulting business and sales of large computers to businesses. "In light of Intel's very disappointing earnings, it makes IBM's numbers look that much better and makes it look like a possible safe haven for tech investors," Neimeth said. Even so, IBM shares fell 1.3 per cent in extended trade. Including Tuesday's after-hours drop, shares of Intel are up about 2.5 per cent in the last 12 months. On the same basis, IBM stock is down about 13 per cent and shares of Yahoo! are little changed over the past 12 months. Several financial analysts said the Yahoo! earnings shortfall - it missed the average estimate by a penny - reflected flat growth in gross margins and higher than expected operating expenses. Chief financial officer Susan Decker said expenses were up as the company invested in high-growth areas. Yahoo! shares have also been weighed down by competitive concerns over the faster growth of rival Google and the imminent loss of key advertising customer Microsoft, which is gearing up to compete more actively itself in online ads by the middle of this year. And in Intel's case, due partly to the earnings miss, chief executive Paul Otellini said the company would stop issuing mid-quarter updates. Intel missed its own forecast it gave in mid-November, reporting revenue of US$10.2 billion ($14.94 billion), compared with its forecast for US$10.4 billion to US$10.6 billion. "We're starting out in a bit more of a hole for 2006 than we first had thought. We hope to capitalise on any revenue opportunity and a lot will depend on the product," Otellini said.

www.nzherald.co.nz

Computer science growing into a basic science

2006-01-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

Computer science has evolved over many decades. While the early decades were dominated by mechanical calculating machines, today’s computers have evolved from the 1960s into a finite automaton that realises a Turning Machine, using architecture originally proposed by von Neumann. This model provides for a very general purpose machine capable of addressing problems across all endeavours of human activity. The microprocessor revolution, large-scale and super-efficient semiconductor production, huge growth in primary and secondary storage, and high-speed networking and switching capacity have dramatically changed the way end-users look at computers and computer networks.

The enormous computational power now available has led to a situation where computers are routinely used to solve fundamental problems across physical, chemical, biological, engineering, medical and social sciences. There are any numbers of examples to drive home the point. As the following examples show, many of these will be impossible without computersThe ‘Four Color Conjecture,’ originally posed in 1852, was one of the first mathematical theorems to be proved through computational means. Using 1,200 hours of high-speed computers, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken of the University of Illinois solved the conjecture in 1976.
• Allen Cormack of Tufts University, US, and Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI, England, got their 1979 Nobel prize for physiology and medicine for inventing Computer Aided Tomography (CAT).
• IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ supercomputer “defeated” chess champion Gary Kasparov in May 1997.
• On September 20, 2002, Boeing announced the launch of its 777 series of aircraft that were “100% digitally designed.”
• On April 14, 2003, a major milestone was reached in biological sciences with the completion of the sequencing of the human genome.
• Computers helped solve the mathematical theorem ‘Four Colour Conjecture’• Boeing used computer graphics to design its 777 series aircraft• Sequencing of the human genome was completed with the help of computers
Against this background, it was interesting to hear eminent computer scientists at the ‘Tech Vista,’ organised recently by Microsoft Research (MSR), India .
Legendary Oxford professor Sir Tony Hoare, winner of the 1980 ACM Award (the equivalent of the Nobel prize in computer science) spoke about his “40 years in computing.” He mentioned his early interest in machine translation and deep interest in ‘programme verification’ that attempts to ‘prove’ the correctness of programmes, than merely ‘testing the programmes’ for possible errors. In the process, he invented the ‘Quick Sort’ algorithm, used billions of times every day by millions of computers around the world.

Professor Raj Reddy, founder-director of the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, spoke about his ‘Million Book Digital Library Project.’ He outlined the challenges of automated classification, machine translation, particularly in Indian languages, natural language processing, speech, summarisation and ‘mining’ of large volumes of text to discover ‘hidden patterns.’
Professor Maria Klawe, dean of engineering at Princeton university, shared details of the ‘The Aphasia Project,’ in which she and her researchers are designing hand-held devices that combine images, text and sound to address the special needs of people with cognitive disorder which affects a person’s ability to process words.
Dr Dan Ling, vice-president, Microsoft Research, talked of projects that focus on mobile phones and their interaction with human beings. A particularly interesting project is the one addressing the challenges of patients affected by ‘sleep apnea.’

The talks demonstrated that research in computer science is moving beyond the study of a set of ‘computing machinery.’ Just as mathematics and physics have matured into fundamental sciences, computer science, too, is graduating into one. This is of special significance for India, where the scientific community confuses the study of computer science with the acquisition of IT skills leading to well-paying jobs, and often laments that computer science is “killing” other basic sciences.

We do need good physicists, chemists, material scientists and mathematicians. Computer science, if properly appro-ached, will nourish the growth of every other science, be it astronomy, space science, nuclear science, biological science, materials science, or health science.

fecolumnists.expressindia.com

IBM grant furnishes Council on Aging with computers

2006-01-19T16:38:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 19, 2006The Council on Aging will benefit from an IBM on Demand Community grant of two high-powered IBM personal computers. The grant was made at the request of Jim Meuse, who is an IBM retiree and active volunteer with the Council on Aging.
"We are proud to underscore the continuation of IBM's strong commitment to the Wakefield community through our On Demand Community program," said Sean Rush, IBM senior state executive. "We anticipate this gift will help our local community organizations such as the Council on Aging continue to provide excellent service to our citizens."
"The Council on Aging is delighted to be partnering with IBM to provide better technology to seniors using our computer center," said Judy Luciano, COA director. "Better technology means greater efficiency."

IBM launched On Demand Community in November 2003. Since then, over 61,000 employees worldwide have registered and are tracking their hours to be eligible for grants of technology or cash awards to the organizations where they volunteer. In June 2004, IBM announced the next step in its On Demand Community volunteer initiative by enabling its approximately 160,000 retirees worldwide to leverage new technology tools to increase the impact and value of volunteer efforts in schools and local agencies across the globe. Currently over 1,200 IBM employee and retirees in Massachusetts have registered at the On Demand Community Web site.

www2.townonline.com

Tech titans Intel, IBM cite soft 4th-quarter revenue

2006-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

NewsStand - Wednesday, January 18, 2006
USA TODAY
Michelle Kessler
SAN FRANCISCO -- Tech giants Intel and IBM reported disappointing fourth-quarter revenue Tuesday, getting the corporate earnings season off to a dismal start.Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, reported revenue of $10.2billion, below its own estimate of $10.4billion to $10.6billion. Its shares dropped 9.5% to $23.10 in after-hours trading on the news, released after the market's close.
IBM, which sells everything from computer components to consulting services, reported revenue of $24.4billion. That was well below the $25.5billion Wall Street analysts on average had expected. After hours, IBM shares were unchanged at $83.

The weak sales are an ominous sign for the tech industry, which has spent three years clawing its way back from the dot-com bust. But tech analysts say that some of the shortfall came from operational problems at the companies instead of a massive slowdown.
"The PC environment is generally pretty healthy," says equity analyst Richard Whittington with Caris & Co.
But it didn't seem that way to Intel, at least in the last few weeks in the quarter. That's when revenue tumbled, CEO Paul Otellini said. He blamed product shortages, falling prices and weakening demand. Despite that, Intel's net income of $2.5billion, or 40 cents a share, rose from $2.1billion, or 33 cents a share, a year ago. But Intel's profit margin was 61.8%, less than its estimate of 63%.
Blame rival Advanced Micro Devices, Whittington says. "AMD is widely perceived to have better-quality products. They're forcing Intel to lower its prices."

In the current quarter, Intel expects revenue of $9.1 billion to $9.7 billion. While the first quarter is typically slower than the fourth, that's a greater decline than usual, says equity analyst Ashok Kumar at Raymond James. That's troublesome, especially as Intel and AMD are building more chip factories, he says.
Intel also said it would stop releasing midquarter earnings updates -- the numbers it missed so badly Tuesday. Instead, the chipmaker will provide more information during quarterly reports.
IBM at least had some good news. Net income of $3.2billion, or $1.99 a share, rose from $2.8billion, or $1.67 a share, a year ago. That was more than analysts had expected. (The results include a $267million charge related to IBM's decision to discontinue its pension plan.)
The company achieved the strong profit despite unfavorable fluctuations in currency exchange rates, says equity analyst Richard Petersen at Pacific Crest Securities. Those fluctuations might help explain why revenue was lower than Wall Street expectations, he says.

Another good sign: IBM boosted profit in its consulting division. Sales of big, back-office computers were strong. IBM CFO Mark Loughridge says the company is healthy, despite the revenue weakness. "Each segment contributed solid profit growth," he said.
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IBM profit gains on corporate computers

2006-01-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

BOSTON (AP) — A new line of mainframe computers and positive trends in the chip business boosted fourth-quarter results at IBM (IBM), where net profits rose 13% and beat Wall Street expectations Tuesday.
The report also provided a crucial update on the health of IBM's services business, which accounts for more than half of Big Blue's revenue. IBM saw a shortfall in long-term services contracts signed in the fourth quarter, though it was not as severe as some analysts had feared.
In the last three months of 2005, IBM earned $3.19 billion, or $1.99 a share, on revenue of $24.4 billion.
The results were pulled down 10 cents a share by a $267 million charge stemming from IBM's recent decision to freeze its pension plan for U.S. workers in 2008, and by 2 cents a share because of an accounting change.
Leaving those figures out, the $2.11 in earnings per share easily beat the $1.94 consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

However, IBM fell short of the revenue forecast of $25.5 billion.
In the same period of 2004, IBM registered a net profit of $2.83 billion, $1.67 a share, with revenue of $27.7 billion. Subtracting the performance of IBM's personal-computer division, which was later sold to China's Lenovo Group, earnings would have been $2.77 billion, $1.64 a share, on $24.7 billion in revenue.
That means IBM saw a 1% drop in revenue in the fourth quarter, though Mark Loughridge, IBM's chief financial officer, said the company would have seen 3% growth if not for currency fluctuations.
Looking ahead, Loughridge said IBM has "headwinds to work through," including pension costs and a strengthening dollar, which can hurt U.S.-based exporters.

Still, he said, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM will likely exceed Wall Street's current estimates of $5.66 a share in 2006 by as much as 12 cents. The revenue forecast is $93.4 billion.
IBM shares fell 17 cents to close at $83 on the New York Stock Exchange before the earnings report was released. In after-hours trading, IBM shares were up 30 cents.
The report wrapped a bumpy year in which Big Blue's stock fell 17%, leaving IBM's market capitalization below that of Google. The first quarter fell short of analysts' forecasts, leading IBM to cut 14,500 jobs and prompting a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into how the company disclosed its stock-compensation expenses.

While the following two quarters marked a return to form, many analysts said the fourth-quarter report would indicate whether IBM had been benefiting more from cost-cutting than from strength in its core businesses.
In particular, some analysts had warned in recent weeks that the services division had seen trouble closing deals in the fourth quarter.
The actual figure, $11.5 billion in signings, was about the midpoint of estimates but still represented a 9% slide from the same period a year earlier. The total backlog of deals in the pipeline, a closely watched measure, remained flat from the previous year.
Services revenue in the period was $12.0 billion, down 5% from $12.6 billion a year earlier. Without currency fluctuations, the dip would have been 1%.
"You put it all together and what it tells me is they're losing more business than they're selling," said analyst Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Research. "And that's a worrisome sign."
Loughridge acknowledged that the services division fell short of IBM's full-year revenue expectations. But he said the business benefited from "productivity initiatives" that helped boost gross margins by 3.1 percentage points. IBM also signed a 10-year, $1.1 billion technology outsourcing pact last week with Gap Inc.
The fourth quarter marked the first full period in which IBM's newest mainframe — the million-dollar-plus machine that is the stalwart of the hardware division — was available for sale. Revenue in the mainframe line rose 5%, but the real hardware star was the microelectronics division, which was a laggard in previous years but saw sales leap 48% in the fourth quarter. The group makes chips for video game consoles and other high-end applications.
In all of 2005, IBM earned $7.93 billion, $4.87 a share, on revenue of $91.1 billion. In 2004, profits were $7.48 billion, $4.38 a share, on revenue of $96.3 billion.

www.usatoday.com

Tech titans Intel, IBM cite soft 4th-quarter revenue

2006-01-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

By Michelle Kessler, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Tech giants Intel (INTC) and IBM (IBM) reported disappointing fourth-quarter revenue Tuesday, getting the corporate earnings season off to a dismal start.
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, reported revenue of $10.2 billion, below its own estimate of $10.4 billion to $10.6 billion.

IBM, which sells everything from computer components to consulting services, reported revenue of $24.4 billion. That was well below the $25.5 billion Wall Street analysts on average had expected. After hours, IBM shares were unchanged at $83.
The weak sales are an ominous sign for the tech industry, which has spent three years clawing its way back from the dot-com bust. But tech analysts say that some of the shortfall came from operational problems at the companies instead of a massive slowdown.
"The PC environment is generally pretty healthy," says equity analyst Richard Whittington with Caris & Co.
But it didn't seem that way to Intel, at least in the last few weeks in the quarter. That's when revenue tumbled, CEO Paul Otellini said. He blamed product shortages, falling prices and weakening demand. Despite that, Intel's net income of $2.5 billion, or 40 cents a share, rose from $2.1 billion, or 33 cents a share, a year ago. But Intel's profit margin was 61.8%, less than its estimate of 63%.
Blame rival Advanced Micro Devices, Whittington says. "AMD is widely perceived to have better-quality products. They're forcing Intel to lower its prices."

In the current quarter, Intel expects revenue of $9.1 billion to $9.7 billion. While the first quarter is typically slower than the fourth, that's a greater decline than usual, says equity analyst Ashok Kumar at Raymond James. That's troublesome, especially as Intel and AMD are building more chip factories, he says.
Intel also said it would stop releasing midquarter earnings updates — the numbers it missed so badly Tuesday. Instead, the chipmaker will provide more information during quarterly reports.
IBM at least had some good news. Net income of $3.2 billion, or $1.99 a share, rose from $2.8 billion, or $1.67 a share, a year ago. That was more than analysts had expected. (The results include a $267 million charge related to IBM's decision to discontinue its pension plan.)
The company achieved the strong profit despite unfavorable fluctuations in currency exchange rates, says equity analyst Richard Petersen at Pacific Crest Securities. Those fluctuations might help explain why revenue was lower than Wall Street expectations, he says.

Another good sign: IBM boosted profit in its consulting division. Sales of big, back-office computers were strong. IBM CFO Mark Loughridge says the company is healthy, despite the revenue weakness. "Each segment contributed solid profit growth," he said.

www.usatoday.com

IBM to freeze $48B pension plan in 2008

2006-01-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

By BRIAN BERGSTEINAP TECHNOLOGY WRITER
BOSTON -- Furthering corporate America's move away from pensions, International Business Machines Corp. said Thursday it will freeze its $48 billion pension plan in 2008 and instead enhance its 401(k) benefits for its 125,000 U.S. workers.

Nearly all IBM's U.S. employees - everyone hired before Jan. 1, 2005 - have pension benefits accruing under a traditional annuity-like plan or a cash-balance plan, which gives workers interest-bearing funds that they can take with them if they leave the company.

But these "defined-benefit" plans are becoming rarer. Companies say the plans carry too many uncertainties, largely because swings in interest rates and investment performances change accounting considerations and the amounts businesses must contribute to their pension funds in a given year.

Industrial giants such as IBM and airlines that still carry pension obligations say the costs and complexities hamper their ability to compete with younger, more nimble rivals that aren't saddled with pension obligations.
Beginning in 2008, then, IBM workers' pension benefits will be locked in place, based on salary and length of service. The accrual of benefits will stop, meaning future raises or additional years with the company will not signify bigger pension checks upon retirement.

Instead, IBM will increase its contribution to its 401(k) plans, in which workers get a defined, predictable amount from the company that they're responsible for investing. IBM will double the percentage of employees' contributions that it matches, to 6 percent of salary; certain employees will be eligible to receive more.
Current retirees will see no changes.

IBM executives said that by no longer having to account for pension accruals that would have mounted after 2008, the Armonk, N.Y.-based technology giant will save between $450 million and $500 million this year alone and up to $3 billion from 2006 through 2010.

However, the change will result in a $270 million charge in the just-completed fourth quarter of 2005.
The action mirrors steps IBM has already taken in other countries, and follows IBM's decision to offer 401(k) plans only - no pensions - to workers hired after Jan. 1, 2005. Similarly, rival Hewlett-Packard Co. decided last year to offer only a 401(k) plan to U.S. workers hired this year and beyond.

Patrick Kendall, a pension expert at Diversified Investment Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in retirement plans, said the "hard freeze" IBM announced Thursday was almost inevitable considering the company's earlier "soft freeze" of closing the plan to new employees.

"I think a lot of these sponsors would like to get out of (defined-benefit plans) entirely, just terminate the plan," he said. But many companies find that termination fees and other complications negate that strategy, he said.

Pensions have been a touchy subject for IBM, which was hit with a federal lawsuit - settled for up to $1.4 billion - filed by employees who contended that IBM committed age discrimination when it shifted to a cash-balance plan.

Randy MacDonald, IBM's head of human resources, said the decision was unrelated to the lawsuit.
"It's all about cost-competitiveness, so that we could continue to be the financially viable company that we are," he said.

Accenture earnings may bode well for IBM

2005-10-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO: Accenture Ltd.'s better-than-expected profit report may be a good sign for the company's bigger competitor, IBM . Accenture, the world's second-largest consulting company after IBM, on Thursday said rebounding demand for consulting services by financial-services businesses helped drive a 25 percent surge in quarterly net income and a 13 percent increase in revenue.

International Business Machines Corp. reports third-quarter results on Oct. 17 and Accenture's comments about increasing demand for services, rather than a fight for existing business, cheered some analysts.

"They were able to achieve their results because prices were stable," said Bob Djurdjevic of Phoenix-based market research company Annex Research. "That means that competitors like IBM aren't giving away the store anymore."

Shares of IBM closed 1 percent higher at $80.50 on the New York Stock Exchange after advancing as high as $81.11. Accenture's stock ended 5.6 percent higher at $26.67. Accenture on Thursday announced its first dividend since going public in 2001.

Demand for technology services and consulting may be recovering after slumping from 2000 to 2004, when businesses reduced spending as stock markets stumbled and profits fell, analysts said. "We're finding leading companies making major investments to improve their competitive edge," Accenture Chief Executive Bill Green said on Thursday. "A lot of what we heard from about an improving environment from Accenture will apply to IBM," said Cindy Shaw, an analyst at Moors & Cabot Capital Markets in San Francisco who covers Accenture but not IBM.

"But Accenture is also benefiting more than many of its competitors from having differentiated capabilities" that help companies improve business results, she said. Shaw noted that services account for only about 55 percent of IBM's revenue and operating profit, and added that the company is in the process of restructuring its services organization.

Analysts on average expect IBM to report a 3.7 percent decline in third-quarter earnings per share before exceptional costs, to $1.13 from $1.17, according to Reuters Estimates. Of 23 analysts who track IBM, nine recommend buying the stock, eight have "outperform" ratings and five have "holds." One advises selling.

IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge in July said he was comfortable with the range of analysts' profit forecasts for the second half of 2005. The company beat expectations when it reported second-quarter earnings in July amid a rebound in its services and software businesses.

IBM's Global Services unit, which competes with Accenture in consulting, showed solid growth in revenue and a surge in signings of new contracts in the second quarter. IBM's stock trades at 14.6 times estimated fiscal 2006 earnings per share, compared with Accenture's 15.9.

GEN signs MoU with IBMHubli | October 08, 2005 7:35:49 PM IST

2005-10-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

Global Education Network (GEN), a Hubli based leading software company in Education sector, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as an Independent Software Vendor Advantage (ISVA) of IBM.

GEN President Mallikarjun Huralikoppi, talking to newsmen here today, said that the company has signed a MoU with Karnataka Lingayat Education (KLE) Society for providing centralised Campus Management Solution (CMS) with 18 different modules mainly for the Education Sector. The scope of this application meant for providing online access to management, principal, faculty, students and parents across the institution and on the internet and thereby helping to manage resources effectively and provide information both statutory and college related at the fingertips.

He said that another software Examination Management System (EMS) was to computerise examination system for generating application forms, admission ticket, coding, decoding, tabulation, announcing results, printing of marks cards with photograph, ledgers certificates and the statistical reports for all the courses of the University as required by the statutory bodies.
Replying to a question, he said that the company planned to provide job opportunities to over 500 people by 2008. The company also planned to have tie up with Open Universities for providing e-education.

Service Oriented Architecture: IBM’s Vision for the Future

2005-10-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

By Holly Neal, Special To LTW
Editor’s note: You have likely heard about SOA, or service oriented architecture, but not the underlying details about the concept. Local Tech Wire asked InCentric Solutions, an IBM business partner, to fill in LTW readers. Holly Neal is marketing director at InCentric Solutions.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK - IBM’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a flexible, robust infrastructure to model, assemble, deploy and manage business processes. It's cost-effective, modular and scalable which means you can implement an end-to-end SOA solutions customized to your requirements, when you want and how you want. SOA allows business processes to be decomposed into discrete services. These services can then be delivered however best for the customer.

Services, once assembled and deployed as running processes are monitored and assessed by business process management practices. Business Process Management then provides the feedback required to flexibly adapt processes to meet changing business needs. Business Process Management supported by SOA is critical to IBM Business partners because it:

Maximizes return on assets by enabling the reuse of a partner’s and other developed business processes

Provides partners with new engagement opportunities to rapidly build on and optimize customer existing business processes

It enables partners to expand the penetration in customer's IT environments even when customers are undergoing mergers or acquiring other companies.

Improves customer satisfaction with partner’s solution by improving the predictability for solution's impact on customers business processesSOA brings together Business Processes and the technologies required to implement them. This is important to IBM Business Partners because increasingly customers are making technology decisions exclusively on business requirements. SOA offers the traditional technology providers the ability to demonstrate their solution’s value directly to line of business management.

An open integrated platform based on open standards is a critical enabler for SOA because without open standards assembling discrete services from different sources into end-to-end processes would be impossible. Without standards or best practices as a guide, many companies have developed their business processes bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, over time.

Or perhaps they’ve focused on solving specific, ad hoc issues. The outcome has been an infrastructure that is inflexible and very difficult, expensive and time-consuming to change. Success with service oriented architecture (SOA) starts with a flexible, robust infrastructure that you can use in conjunction with your existing IT assets to create additional business value and flexibility.

The IBM SOA FoundationThe IBM SOA Foundation is an integrated, open-standard-based set of software, best practices and patterns that is designed to provide what you need to get started with your SOA. IBM SOA Foundation is designed to help you extend the value of the applications and business processes that are running your business today. You can select components on a build-as-you-go basis, as you need to address new requirements. And you can readily enhance IBM SOA Foundation with capabilities from the broader IBM software portfolio.

The components that comprise IBM SOA Foundation have been carefully selected to support each stage of the SOA Lifecycle. The SOA Lifecycle includes four stages: model, assemble, deploy and manage. Underpinning all of these lifecycle stages are governance and processes that provide guidance and oversight for a SOA project.

IBM SOA Foundation is more than just software. It offers SOA best practices through SOA-related guides, white papers and other resources based on extensive customer experience. IBM also provides IBM SOA Industry Accelerators that extend the value of IBM SOA Foundation with industry-specific assets. These accelerators provide best practices in the form of practical how-to guides to apply proven practices to solution implementation. ________________________________________________________________________________________To learn more about IBM SOA Foundation, contact Troy Webb of Incentric Solutions at 919.427.0900, or troy.webb@incentric.com or www.ibm.com\soa

IBM pushes Workplace forward with aid of development tool

2005-10-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

Big Blue is shipping Designer 2.5 to bridge the Notes–Workplace gap

IBM has released Workplace Designer 2.5, a development tool it hopes will help users bridge the gap between its legacy Lotus Notes/Domino architecture and the Workplace platform IBM has declared is the future when it comes to collaboration applications.

Workplace Designer is an Eclipse-based tool designed to allow programmers to build applications for IBM’s Workplace platform, which is based on a foundation of J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and web services standards. That’s a big architectural departure for developers accustomed to Domino.

To help ease the transition, IBM is keeping Workplace Designer’s look and feel as close as possible to that of Domino Designer. Workplace Designer can also import forms from existing Lotus applications for use in new Workplace applications.

The software, priced at US$649 (NZ$938) per developer, is available for download from IBM’s Passport Advantage website.Early user Rob Novak is enthusiastic about the software’s ability to link Lotus developers with IBM’s broader software stack.

“This is making available something that has previously been a big black hole to us, WebSphere Server,” he says.Novak is the president of Snapps, a consultancy with deep IBM ties and a long history with Lotus. Its staffers average more than a decade of Lotus development experience each.

Novak began working with early versions of Workplace Designer right after IBM’s January Lotusphere conference. “At this point we’re in the exploratory stage of seeing what we can do,” he says. “We’re looking at the features that allow us to migrate the design of Domino forms, for instance, so we can have a Domino developer mock up a form quickly and then move it over to Workplace.”Novak sees a “heavy emphasis on coexistence” between Workplace and Domino. IBM’s Workplace push has spooked the Lotus faithful.

Consequently, IBM has emphasised that customers can opt for a very gradual transition, assisted by tools aimed at making such a move as smooth as possible.None of Snapps’ clients with legacy Lotus systems have rushed to embrace Workplace, though some are cautiously exploring it for new development, Novak says. So far, Snapps’ Workplace projects have been investigative rather than for production use. “The customers we’ve been working with who have a Domino infrastructure are not going away from it, they’re adding on to it,” Novak says. “If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll be doing Domino development for another ten years.”

IBM drops SCO countersuit claims

2005-10-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco

IBM has dropped its a number of patent infringement counterclaims against The SCO Group.
SCO had filed a large number of requests for additional depositions regarding the countersuit, and IBM says it's dropping several claims - but not the suit - to speed up its defense of SCO vs IBM.

"While IBM continues to believe that SCO infringed IBM's valid patents, IBM agreed to withdraw its patent counterclaims to simplify and focus the issues in this case and to expedite their resolution. The little discovery that SCO has produced regarding IBM's patent claims makes clear that there is insufficient economic reason to pursue these claims. Since SCO's sales have been, and are, limited, a finding of infringement would yield only the most modest royalty or award of damages and would not justify the expense of continuing prosecution of these claims," said IBM.

In other words, SCO's dwindling financial resources mean that the reward from winning the countersuit weren't worth the trouble. An impatient Judge Wells also denied SCO's motion to compel IBM to release hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the development history of Linux.

"It's a breathtakingly bold chess move," says Groklaw's Pamela Jones of IBM's decision to drop its lawsuit.

As she explains further -
"There is no money from a plaintiff that has burned through its millions, handing it all over to lawyers chasing a now-popped bubble of a scheme. Oops. Did I say scheme? That doesn't seem like the right word. Did I mean to write scam? No, I probably meant to write dream. That's it. A popped bubble of a dream. Ah! those fading daydreams of second homes -- nay, castles! -- and undeserved millions, just from cynically hitching a piggyback ride on the back of the rising star, Linux. I guess we will get to find out from SCO the answer to poet Langston Hughes' question in his poem, 'Dream Deferred' …"

Which she then quotes, but which we'll spare you. ®

IBM to unwrap first dual-core Xeon 'Paxville' servers

2005-10-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

IDG News Service, Boston Bureau
IBM Corp. is due to unveil its first two 64-bit servers based on Intel Corp.'s dual-core Xeon chip, formerly code-named Paxville DP, when the chip giant launches the processor Monday. Under a promotional deal to last through year-end, Big Blue will sell one of the servers for the same price as the single-core model it replaces, according to an IBM executive. The move is designed to provide an additional incentive for users to adopt dual-core computing sooner rather than later.

Dual-core computing is the placing together of two CPUs (central processing units) on a single piece of silicon as a way to both cut costs and lower thermal emissions. Since processor-intensive tasks can be handled separately, dual-core chips can also help improve the performance of multithreaded applications.

"Dual-core is the future," Alex Yost, director of xSeries and IntelliStation products with IBM's systems and technology group, said in a phone interview Thursday. "It offers the best performance per dollar and per watt. We believe customers will switch over where dual-core [technology] is available." By the end of next year, he estimates that two-way and four-way dual-core technologies will power almost 100 percent of the servers in the market.

The dual-core two-way xSeries 346 is a 2U rack server and will have a starting price of US$2,969, the same price as the previous single-core xSeries 346, according to Yost. U is the standard unit for measuring the space between shelves on a server rack where 1U equals 1.75 inches.

Shipping in mid-October, the xSeries 346 will be powered by a dual-core Xeon chip with a clock speed of 2.8GHz and will come with 2G bytes of DDR (double data rate) II memory, Yost said. The server will also feature eight memory sockets supporting a maximum of 16G bytes of memory and four PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots, Yost said. The PCI slots are in addition to the server's RAID (redundant arrays of independent disks) and systems management cards, he added.

The dual-core xSeries 336 is a 1U rack server and will also be powered by a dual-core Xeon chip running at 2.8GHz, according to Yost. IBM expects to ship the server in November and plans to release more specifications and pricing details at that time.

Both servers are built on a design IBM debuted in August 2004, Yost said, its eXtended Design Architecture, which was created in part to handle the demands of dual-core computing. The architecture includes a Big Blue technology, Calibrated Vectored Cooling, which optimizes the flow of cooled air through the server.

When it comes to dual-core computing, Intel has significantly lagged behind rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) in bringing chips to market. Although there won't be any announcements from server vendors to support it, Intel will also talk Monday about its multicore Xeon processor, code-named Paxville MP, according to Yost.

Back in August, Intel announced that development of both Paxville DP and MP was ahead of schedule, enabling the company to deliver the chip this year in advance of the original delivery date of 2006.

"There are some areas where [AMD's] Opteron will continue to outperform Xeon," Yost said, including Intel's front-side bus design, which analysts suggest can be a drag on performance compared with the AMD chip. "Paxville DP is great progress for Intel," he added.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is also expected to announce dual-core Xeon powered ProLiant servers when the Intel chip debuts Monday. Dell Inc. has already announced that it intends to ship a mix of servers, blades and workstations based on dual-core Xeon processors in the first half of this month.

IBM Invites Corporations to Address Critical Teacher Shortage

2005-10-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

Proposes 10,000 New Teachers Come From Private Sector

WASHINGTON, DC -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/07/2005 -- IBM today invited corporate America to address the critical shortage of teachers facing the nation's schools at the Business Education Network Summit. The company urged United States corporations to join in transitioning employees to second careers as teachers in U.S. kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms.

According to a 2005 National Center for Education Information Study, 40 percent of public school teachers are planning to exit the profession within the next five years. One-third (34 percent) of high school teachers expect to be retired by then.

IBM recently announced a new Transition to Teaching program that will allow experienced employees to become fully accredited teachers in their local communities upon electing to leave the company. The IBM program will begin as a pilot in January with as many as 100 U.S. employees in various geographic areas participating across the country. IBM is committed to sharing its program, methodologies, materials, and experience with any company willing to join this effort.

"One of the key elements for strong communities is a solid school system," said Stephen Jordan, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship. "IBM's innovative transition program for getting professional business people into the classroom will help our schools, our communities and our nation. It's a model that we plan to share with many other interested businesses, and we look forward to seeing it succeed."

The IBM program will focus on math and science teachers, areas in which many IBM employees have strong backgrounds. But the need for teachers is across all disciplines. Transferring skills from the corporate environment to the classroom is an innovative way to address the need for teachers and provide students with the real-world perspective.

According to Ann Cramer, IBM director of Corporate Community Relations, "If 100 companies will join us in training 100 employees as teachers, we can help put 10,000 educators in the classroom."

Cramer spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship Business Education Network Summit in Washington, D.C. which brought together corporate leaders, educators and not-for-profit leaders.

"There are many great teachers in our schools today that are doing a great job. Their work is challenging, and we commend their efforts," said Cramer. "This is just one small step in addressing the teacher shortage. This is an innovative way to help turn the tide."
About the Business Education Network

The Business Education Network (BEN) of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship (CCC) is a coalition of businesses, educators, and education service providers dedicated to advancing the global competitiveness of the U.S. education system and the success of future generations of Americans. BEN focuses on promoting business education partnerships to accomplish local, regional, and national objectives.

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Over the last 10 years, IBM has been one of the largest corporate contributors of cash, equipment and, most important, people to nonprofit organizations and educational institutions across the United States and around the world. For more information on IBM's philanthropic endeavors, visit http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility.

Contact: Catherine Collins / Mobile: 917-374-0541 ckc@us.ibm.com

China wants its brands in U.S.Companies don't want to be known just for low-cost products

2005-10-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

By David Greising
Special to The Morning CallBEIJING
It's a long way from here to a castle in France, but that was an early stop — a pilgrimage of sorts — for a group of senior Chinese executives intent on taking the next great leap in capitalism.

At Chateau Touffou, the Chinese huddled with representatives from the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather to plot a global branding strategy. Ever since advertising visionary David Ogilvy bought it, the agency has used the castle to woo big clients like Motorola and American Express. This time the client was Brand China.

If Chinese companies ever become household names — if Lenovo computers and Haier refrigerators and Chery automobiles ever rival Dell and GE and GM — Brand China can trace its roots to the meetings last October in France where Ogilvy taught the Chinese the secrets of Brand Marketing 101.

''The Chinese going outside is still a very new thing. It's very experimental at this stage,'' said Joseph Wang, chairman of Ogilvy's southern China business, who attended the meeting run by Ogilvy chief executive Shelly Lazarus. ''I can't point to a super success yet.

But you've got to remember this one thing: Chinese companies are very quick learners.''Walk the aisles of a local Wal-Mart, Target or Best Buy, and the words Made in China are stamped on everything from sweat socks to auto parts to cell phones.

But those products still carry all-American brand names like Fruit of the Loom or Delco or Motorola.China won't stay Brand C forever, though.Chinese companies are not satisfied just slapping someone else's name on their products.

Some Chinese companies want to buy established western brands, others will build from scratch. They all share a common urge to own brand names they can export worldwide — and import the profits back to China.Consumer electronics company TCL of China bought Thomson Electronics, maker of RCA televisions.

China's Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. was seeking a western brand when it offered to rescue Britain's failed MG Rover early this year.Go-it-alone strategies seem likely to be the favored strategy, though.China's Haier Group tried to buy instant credibility last spring with its bid for Maytag Corp. But when Whirlpool Corp. nabbed Maytag, Haier opted to go solo.

Haier currently sells low-end refrigerators in Wal-Marts and Targets across the United States, where it competes exclusively on price. But its strategy calls for a push into higher-end products, and bigger profits to Haier.To pull it off, Haier is building a research and design center near its U.S. production plant in Camden, S.C.

There it will collect intelligence about American tastes and market trends. Back in China, designers will use the information to dream up new products that will sell in the United States. In Europe Haier is building market share on an aggressive push into high-style, high-end products.Think U.S. competitors don't take China's new branding effort seriously? They do.

China's China's Chery Automobile Co. may be a rounding error compared to General Motors Corp.'s $193 billion in annual sales. But when Chery announced a daunting plan to enter the crowded U.S. market by 2007 — amidst hints that its advertising budget might reach $225 million a year — GM took note. The auto giant threatened to sue, claiming Chery sounds too much like GM's Chevy. Chery in late September agreed to use a different name plate when it comes to the states.

Nowhere is the push to push product more pronounced than at Lenovo Group, China's biggest maker of personal computers. A close look inside Lenovo's business shows how China's brand-name giants plan to take on the wider world.

Combining leading edge technology, low-cost production, top-flight management methods and cutting edge marketing, they hope to get the job done.Lenovo took two bold steps designed to put it on a world-class stage.

Last year, it ponied up an estimated $75 million to become a top Olympic sponsorship, on the same level as brand-name giants like Visa, Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Then in May it paid $1.75 billion to buy the ThinkPad brand and the rest of the personal computer business from IBM Corp.''China's brand history is very short,'' acknowledges Yuanqing Yang, who engineered the IBM deal late last year. ''Maybe we need time to have several famous brands worldwide. Maybe Lenovo is the beginning of the trend.''Now Yang and other executives on both sides of the Pacific Ocean must make the IBM merger work.

That will mean tackling a challenging cross-cultural merger, keeping production costs low, introducing new technologies, and introducing the Lenovo brand outside China — all while dueling for market share with entrenched giants Dell Computer Co. and Hewlett-Packard.Yang notes that compromise will be key to any success.

For Lenovo, that has meant adopting English as the official language and moving the corporate headquarters to Purchase, N.Y., near IBM's corporate offices. Yang, 41, remains chairman of the company, but the chief executive is an American, former IBM sales executive Steve Ward, 50.

IBM Research marks the big 6-0

2005-10-09T04:50:00.000-07:00

By JULIE MORAN ALTERIO
jalterio@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS

What do the hard disk drive, a supercomputer smart enough to beat a world chess champ and the excimer laser surgery technique that's fixed myopia in millions have in common? All were invented in the research labs of IBM Corp.

Tuesday marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory. What started in a renovated fraternity house near Columbia University in New York has become the largest corporate research division in the world, with 3,000 scientists toiling at eight labs in six countries.

Over the years, the original mission to build calculating machines to aid the war effort has morphed into a wide-ranging endeavor to invent the future of computing, from the mighty Blue Gene supercomputer that's designed to simulate the complex action of proteins in the human body to minuscule carbon nanotubes that could one day replace silicon in computer chips.
Physicist Jia Chen joined IBM Research in 2003 and today is studying carbon nanotubes at the division's headquarters in Yorktown.
Carbon nanotubes — 50,000 times thinner than a human hair — are one of the most promising materials scientists are pursuing to build smaller and smaller computer chips.
Even so, the 33-year-old Ossining resident said it might take 10 to 15 years for carbon nanotubes to make it into a microprocessor — a timeframe she's happy with given the import of what she's researching.
"We could have a significant contribution to a future technology that could impact everybody's life," Chen said.
Though 50 years separate Chen from Fran Allen in age, the elder researcher voices the same passion about her work at IBM.
Allen joined IBM in 1957 to work at a laboratory in Poughkeepsie, where her colleagues were just inventing the field of computer programming.
"We made a lot of mistakes, and we invented a great many things," she said.
Allen's training as a math teacher wouldn't earn her a slot as a programmer at IBM Research today, but back then there weren't computer science departments at colleges.
Allen was hired with three other women, and the four rented a house nearby in Wappingers Falls that became both a social center and a sanctuary where colleagues gathered to discuss the computer systems they were creating.
"So many of us were single and young, there were no boundaries between work and home. It was a tremendously productive period for all of us," Allen said.
Ski trips, hiking trips and just hanging out were an excuse to work out problems. "Napkins were a favorite tool for doing design," she said.
Allen's work on optimizing computer code is considered pioneering in the field. The Croton-on-Hudson resident was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical honor.

"It was very, very challenging. There was never a doubt that it was important," said Allen, who retired in 2002.

Working at a corporate research lab such as IBM's was satisfying, Allen said, because she could see the results in actual products.

"The role of research has always been to do the groundbreaking work and, as part of IBM, to transfer the work to products," Allen said. "I see my career as standing on a wall and seeing both ways. One way is seeing new possibilities and the other is building new products."
Bill Strachan, the program director for technical recruiting for IBM Research, said that mix of pure science and product development makes a career at the company appealing for Ph.D. graduates.

IBM hires about 100 new researchers a year.

"It's intriguing to students that researchers will meet customers 10 to 20 percent of the time. They are looking to solve real problems," he said.

That interaction has intensified in the past 10 or so years as IBM has increasingly viewed its research division as a competitive advantage. A staff of scientists who aren't contributing to the bottom line is a luxury the company can no longer afford.

"Typically we were the ivory tower, but we are an arm of the IBM Corp. and we need to benefit the IBM Corp.," Strachan said.

This strategy is also designed to avoid a repeat of missteps of the past. IBM's invention of relational databases and Reduced Instruction Set Computer architecture benefited competitors such as Oracle and Sun Microsystems years before IBM moved into the database and Unix computing markets.

The head of IBM Research, Paul Horn, senior vice president, said there is a sense in IBM that his division is what sets the Armonk-based computer giant apart from companies that compete on price.

"IBM's business model is to operate in the high value segment of the information technology market. High value means high margins, and it means you can get a return on the research and development dollars you spend," Horn said.

Since 1996, IBM has invested about $5 billion a year on research. Last year, the company spent $5.7 billion.

That investment has translated into a boom in patents. IBM has been granted more U.S. patents than any other company for the past 12 years. Last year, IBM received 3,248 patents.
Increasingly, more of the ideas being generated are related to IBM's software and services business, said Horn, who joined the company 26 years ago.

"When I came here, we were 85 percent or more hardware. There were very few IBM fellows in software. Software was just stuff to make the hardware work," Horn said.

Today, researchers are turning their attention to consulting with clients to solve complex business problems such as managing fleets of vehicles or analyzing text on the Web.
This shift is a reflection of the contribution of computer services to IBM's finances, with $46.2 billion of $96.3 billion in sales last year generated by IBM Global Services.

"We've staked out as our business model to operate in those areas of the IT industry where research can make a difference, which is pretty nice for the research team," Horn said.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr., a professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina, said the challenge for IBM and other corporate research labs is twofold: "How to fund and maintain a basic research program in hard economic times, and how to get great ideas to transfer effectively to the product divisions," he said.

Brooks will be in Yorktown on Tuesday when IBM celebrates its anniversary to lead a discussion on the research division's early days.

Brooks contends that IBM could not have become the company it is without its research division.

"IBM has maintained technical leadership in many areas — magnetics, silicon processing, circuits, computer architecture, compilers — in large part because the research division was well out in front of the developing technologies, mastering them before it was economically or technically feasible to put them into products," he said.

IBM's creation of a research lab reinforced the example of such rivals as Bell Labs and stimulated others such as Xerox's PARC and RCA's Sarnoff Center, Brooks said.
Though the Watson lab wasn't started until 1945, IBM had begun experimenting with a research center more than a decade earlier.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, Thomas J. Watson Sr. oversaw the creation of a dedicated center for the company's engineers and inventors in a building near a manufacturing plant in Endicott, N.Y.

Engineers there researched new types of insulated wire for electrical connections and studied how to strengthen paper for the company's punch cards.
Journalist Kevin Maney, author of "The Maverick and His Machine," a biography of Watson Sr., wrote that IBM spent $1 million — or nearly 6 percent of annual revenue at the time — on that first lab.

The lab was stocked with the latest scientific instruments and a basement weather room that simulated temperature and humidity in every climate where IBM machines were used.
"How could Watson justify this? He spent $1 million for something as amorphous as research and development when businesses were falling apart and nearly one-quarter of Americans had barely enough to subsist. But building the lab had a logic to it. Somehow, Watson had to stimulate demand. He had to come up with products that companies couldn't resist, whatever the economic conditions," Maney wrote.

The breakthroughs of that lab included the first punch card machines that could handle multiplication and division.

Today, the pre-eminent machine at IBM Research is the Blue Gene supercomputer, the product of a $100 million, five-year effort begun in 1999.

A Blue Gene system built for the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is the fastest computer in the world, capable of 136.8 trillion calculations per second, or 136.8 teraflops.

The second-fastest — at 91.2 teraflops — is a Blue Gene system installed in Yorktown.
Al Gara, chief architect for Blue Gene, said designing a new machine with the ability to tackle the complexity of human biology meant rethinking the way supercomputers are built.
"We were trying to do some groundbreaking in terms of protein folding but also in terms of the computer science," Gara said.

Rather than build a power-hungry custom system, IBM scientists used a low-power computer chip in a new configuration. The result? The Blue Gene system for Livermore consumes 15 times less power and is at least 50 percent smaller than the fastest computers of just a couple years ago.

"It's quite clear that the way to get more performance in the future is unrelated to how we got more performance in the past," Gara said.

As the limits of miniaturization of silicon transistors approach, research into new methods to build faster computers is vital, Gara said.

"The future is really unknown, and there is enormous activity and excitement at the lab. If ever we need a research division, it's now," Gara said.

Ensuring there will be an ample supply of scientists to staff the lab is also a priority as IBM ponders its future, said Jim Wynne, a Yorktown researcher and manager of the company's outreach to schoolchildren.

Wynne — who was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame thanks in part to his role in developing excimer laser surgery — said about 300 of his colleagues lecture students on everything from nanotechnology to how search engines work in an effort to spark their interest in science.
"I'm not going to be able to invent the rest of my life. I want to see a future generation of youngsters from my community continue in this field. IBM wants to invest in the pipeline."

IBM Research highlights 1945 1956 1957 1961 1966 1967 1970 1980 1981 1986 1992 1997 IBM opens Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory in New York City.

IBM researchers in San Jose, Calif., produce the first magnetic hard disk. These disks are a vital part of all computers today. Researcher John Backus invents FORTRAN, which became a widely used computer programming language for technical work. The language allowed programs to be written in an easy-to-understand format, such as C=A/B, instead of in 1s and 0s.

IBM moves its research headquarters from Manhattan to Westchester County.Yorktown inventor Bob Dennard invents one-transistor dynamic RAM, known as DRAM. Chips based on this invention are still the dominant form of computer memory.Yorktown researcher Benoit B. Mandelbrot publishes a paper introducing fractal geometry, which describes the shape of irregular natural objects, such as tree branches.

IBM scientist Ted Codd publishes a paper introducing the concept of relational databases, which stores data in tables that are easy to interpret by nontechnical users. Nearly all databases today are based on the concept.

IBM builds its first prototype computer using Reduced Instruction Set Computer architecture, which was invented by IBM scientist John Cocke in the 1970s. Two scientists from the IBM Zurich research laboratory, Gerd K. Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, invent the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, which provides a first-ever look at the topography of atoms. The scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1986 for this work.

Two scientists from the IBM Zurich research laboratory, J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Muller, discover superconductivity in ceramic oxides that carry electricity without loss of energy at much higher temperatures than any other superconductor. A year later, the men win the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery.

IBM introduces ThinkPad laptops, which feature the TrackPoint, a little red pointing device in the middle of the keyboard that was created by IBM researcher Ted Selker, who is now at MIT.

Deep Blue defeats World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in the first known case of a computer besting a world class player in a tournament.

School gets a mobile computer lab outfitted with 30 new Dell notebooks

2005-10-09T04:45:00.000-07:00

JAMESBURG—Laptop computers are now accessible to the hot little hands of students at the John F. Kennedy School. The 30 new Dell notebooks that make up the mobile computer lab and are wheeled through the school each day are reserved by teachers in two-hour increments for classroom activities and lessons.

The mobile lab is a new addition for the 2005-2006 school year and supplements stationary computer lab at the school, which has 30 Dell desktop computers. Jamesburg School Superintendent Shirley Bzdewka said Wednesday that the addition of the mobile computer lab to JFK is an extension of a program started at the Grace M. Breckwedel School.

GMB has a similar IBM mobile computer lab that the school district purchased in 2003.

She said the Dell computers at JFK are especially easy-to-use because they use Wi-Fi connections for Internet access, which means the computers are linked through a wireless network.

"The computers are great because they can be used anywhere in the building," Ms. Bzdewka said. "You can even use them outside."

Ms. Bzdewka said the compact design of laptop computers is ideal for the elementary school and its students. "I think the laptops are more manageable for the younger kids because they're smaller," Ms. Bzdewka said.

She said that although JFK has Internet connectivity in all rooms and two or three computers per classroom, the mobile computer lab is an asset because it allows children to use them all at once, in their own classrooms.

"It's great because the mobile lab really bring technology to the classroom," Ms. Bzdewka said.

Ms. Bzdewka said students use the computers for word processing, reading and math activities. She said the mobile labs at GMB and JFK have been problem-free from damage so far. "There's been no breakage and no problems with computers getting ruined or broken," Ms. Bzdewka said. "We haven't told the students to handle them any different than normal computers, and we've found they're pretty durable."

Ms. Bzdewka said the district bought Dell laptops because the IBM computers had shorter battery life. The district paid about $30,000 for the Dell mobile lab, according to district Business Administrator Tom Reynolds.