Japanese chip makers Toshiba Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. said on Tuesday they would jointly develop 32-nanometer chips to better keep up with rivals.

The companies will decide in 2008 how and if they will jointly produce the chips, they said.

Chip makers are racing to move to tinier circuit sizes to cut production cost per chip function and enable powerful electronics that run for hours without killing the battery. But the shift also forces changes in fundamental materials and processes and exposes chip makers to huge initial costs.

Samsung Electronics Co., IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., Infineon Technologies, STMicroelectronics and Freescale Semiconductor have said they would work through 2010 to develop and produce 32-nanometer chips. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Japanese chip makers have yet to map out how to share the estimated 100-200 billion yen development costs to make the leap to the next generation of chips.

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Hewlett-Packard Co. on Monday announced a suite of software aimed at capturing a stronger stake in the burgeoning IT automation market.

The suite, dubbed Automated Operations 1.0, includes HP Business Service Automation, which incorporates the data-center automation technology HP acquired from buying Opsware earlier this year. With it, users can manage IT processes and generate automated workflows that span a number of systems and teams, according to HP. The product allows customers to record all configuration and change activities.

The suite also includes Service Manager 7.0 and Decision Center 2.0. In addition, HP announced Blueprint and Training for Service Manager 7.0, and IT Service Management Assessment Services.

“It’s looking like a very good first step toward an integrated product suite,” said Chip Gliedman, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Evelyn Hubbert, another Forrester analyst, said Opsware’s technology amounted to the “blue ribbon” on HP’s automation product lineup.

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Q: I have a Dell PowerEdge 4600 server. I want to mount it to my rack with slide rails. Do you have rails I can purchase?

Ray Koury
MIS Supervisor

A: The best solution is to contact your Dell dealer and purchase the rails that are designed to go with the server. They should fit in any standard rack, and will eliminate the chance of damaging the server by trying to attach a third party rail.

If this is not a viable option, we can supply Accuride slide rails, but would require some advice (from Dell or from Accuride, if they have it) as to which slide would be appropriate. However, you would have to accept the liability for putting third party slides on the server.

All in all, the best idea is to contact your Dell supplier.

Rackmount Ranger

TWO years ago, Cyber Monday was a marketing gimmick in search of shoppers. This year, it seems to be a genuine trend that retailers have embraced.

In a survey of roughly 120 members of Shop.org, the trade group for online retailers, nearly three-quarters said they would offer discounts today for Cyber Monday, as the first Monday after Thanksgiving has become known. Shop.org said 32 percent of adults surveyed last week said they would shop online on Cyber Monday, up from 27 percent in 2006.

Among the merchants participating is HSN.com, which is giving first-time customers a discount of 15 percent.

Retailers are hoping the sales create early demand for goods, thus easing the late-season strain on the merchants’ shipping operations. It could also help them record early gains during what could be a cheerless holiday season. Analysts said ripples from the credit crisis and rising fuel costs, among other factors, could damp consumer spending.

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Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become a full-fledged platform for communicating, sharing and advertising. ABC News is betting that it will become a platform for political coverage, as well.

ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership — the site’s first with a news organization — that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category.

To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations will announce today that they are jointly sponsoring Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the primary election there.

“Through this partnership, we want to extend the dialogue both before and after the debate,” said Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president for business development.

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Google is readying plans to make a big showing in a coming auction of wireless airwaves. And contrary to recent speculation, the Web-search leader is likely to bid by itself, rather than partner with a company that has more experience building and operating wireless networks, BusinessWeek.com has learned.

The company will make its plans public by Dec. 3, meeting a government deadline set for prospective bidders, according to a person familiar with the matter. The auction, scheduled for January, gives participants a rare opportunity to assemble spectrum for a national network in a single swoop, potentially creating a competitor to existing mobile service providers AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications (VZ) and Vodafone (VOD).

Google first indicated in July that it might participate in the auction. The Internet search and advertising company had said it was ready to commit “at least $4.6 billion to bidding for spectrum,” but only if certain conditions were met: The government would need to alter the auction rules (BusinessWeek.com, 5/3/07) to ensure broad participation in the bidding and to require the creation of “open” networks that let consumers use the phones and services of their choosing. In short, Google wanted to weaken traditional wireless players’ control of the devices consumers can get and how they use them.

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Information Support Concepts (ISC) is not offering a monthly product special for November. These special offers will resume in December.

Instead, ISC is announcing the launch of our weekly product special! These special prices will be good only for one week, and on one specific product.
There is a special page on our main website showing that week’s special. Quantities are limited, so when the special sells out, they will no longer be available.

You never know what is going to be on special, so it will be well worth it for bargain hunters to check out our site every week. New items will appear each Wednesday, so you don’t want to wait as you might miss out on some spectacular deals.

As always, ISC personnel are ready to answer your questions, and can confirm if the weekly special will work for your specific application. If you have a question, just call us at 800-458-6255.

2U 19″ Rackmount Cantilever Style Vented Shelf
$29.00

Three Questions About Geist
October 5, 2007 • Vol.29 Issue 40, by Will Kelly

Made-To-Order Manufacturing, Customer Focus, Combine

As power and cooling demands in IT equipment continue to increase, it is imperative that SMEs focus on total cost of ownership for IT equipment. Geist Manufacturing (www.geistmfg.com) offers a full line of units with built-in power and environmental monitoring. These features not only help alert SMEs to potential problems with power consumption or temperature conditions but can also help discover and document potential energy savings. We spoke with Brad Wilson, Geist Manufacturing’s chief technical director, about the company, its offerings, and the IT issues he sees facing today’s SME.

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Q: I work for a relay panel manufacturer and I have a customer that has specified a rackmount powerstrip p/n Flexiduct Model BRXN080-10-FM. An internet search has brought me to you folks. Your website doesn’t include the suffix of –FM. Do you know what the difference is?

Michael Teel

A: The FM in the part number means you want to substitute the flush mount brackets for the standard recessed mount brackets. There is no price difference between the two bracket configurations.

Rackmount Ranger

Think your database server is safe? You may want to double-check. According to security researcher David Litchfield, there are nearly half a million database servers exposed on the Internet, without firewall protection.

Litchfield took a look at just over one million randomly generated Internet Protocol [IP] addresses, checking them to see if he could access them on the IP ports reserved for Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle’s database. The results? He found 157 SQL servers and 53 Oracle servers. Litchfield then relied on known estimates of the number of systems on the Internet to arrive at his conclusion: “There are approximately 368,000 Microsoft SQl Servers… and about 124,000 Oracle database servers directly accessible on the Internet,” he wrote in his report, due to be made public next week.

This is not the first time that Litchfield, managing director of NGSSoftware, has conducted this type of research. Two years ago, he released his first Database Exposure Survey, estimating that there were about 350,000 Microsoft and Oracle databases exposed.

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Asked in advance of Nortel Networks’ quarterly report how he feels about the company’s performance these days, one analyst shoots back: “They stink!”

Who could blame him? For the better part of four years, the telecom-equipment maker has disappointed Wall Street with a steady supply of red ink, accounting fiascos, shareholder lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and multiple firings of top executives.

But perhaps Nortel (NT) is starting to put all that behind it. The embattled company reported on Nov. 6 that it earned $27 million in the third quarter—a turnaround from the $63 million loss suffered over the same three-month period in 2006.

While revenues fell, a closer look also offers encouragement. Third-quarter sales totaled $2.7 billion, falling 7.6% from the year-ago tally of $2.9 billion. But the year-ago numbers include revenue from a cellular business Nortel sold in late 2006. After excluding that unit’s sales from the 2006 figures, third-quarter revenue was down just 2% from year-ago levels. And for the first nine months of 2007 revenues are actually 2% higher if the sold division’s results are excluded.

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