Dec 23, 2010 (Alaska Journal of Commerce – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –
Even a business operating in the clouds needs someone on the ground.

In Alaska, Nate Gates is aiming to be what he called that “local throat to choke.”
Gates founded Cloud 49 in July after four years as chief information officer for Chenga Corp., an Alaska Native village corporation, and his preliminary expectations have been exceeded as state companies explore and embrace cloud computing technology.

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(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TOKYO, Dec. 27 — (Kyodo) _ ———- JVC Kenwood to solicit 500 employees for early retirement

TOKYO – JVC Kenwood Holdings Inc. has decided to solicit about 500 employees of struggling Victor Co. of Japan to take early retirement by the end of March as part of cost reduction efforts.

(Seattle Times (WA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 27–As Microsoft looks back on 2010, one thing is clear: The company has more product in it than Justin Bieber’s hair.

From January through December, the software company pumped out a wave of new offerings, from the early success of Kinect to the flaming failure of Kin.

Yet, for all the activity, Microsoft’s stock has done little over the same period. Microsoft started the year at $30.48 a share but closed at $28.30 Thursday — down 7.2 percent.

Top leaders also exited the company: Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach and Business division President Stephen Elop.

As the economy continued its snail’s-pace recovery, these were the bigger product launches of the year.

Azure: Microsoft began the year with the launch of Azure, its platform for cloud computing.

As Chief Executive Steve Ballmer first said at a University of Washington speech in March, “We’re all in” the cloud, a platform where software and data are stored in remote Microsoft data centers instead of corporate servers and are accessed with Internet-connected devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets and televisions. Cloud computing is a bet-the-company move for Microsoft. In the next 10 years, the company believes delivering software via the cloud could make up half of the company’s revenue.

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(San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 27–My first order of business for my final column of 2010 is to admit that I was wrong about the iPad.

In January, shortly after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the device, I wrote that I was “underwhelmed” and argued that the new device was “not a game changer.” Boy was I wrong. The iPad has been an incredible success and a major game changer.

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Dec 27, 2010 (San Jose Mercury News – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –
My first order of business for my final column of 2010 is to admit that I was wrong about the iPad.

In January, shortly after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the device, I wrote that I was “underwhelmed” and argued that the new device was “not a game changer.” Boy was I wrong. The iPad has been an incredible success and a major game changer.

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TAIPEI, Dec 27, 2010 (The China Post – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –
Leading telecommunication-service companies in Taiwan have intensified competition as tablet computers are widely rated as a continuously shining star product for 2011. They are racing against each other to ride the trend by expanding services concerning data communications efficiency, content, marketing channels and service fees as well as enhancing cooperation with suppliers of tablet devices.

TAMPA, Fla. and HOUSTON, Dec. 27, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
ConnectWise, the leading business management solution designed exclusively for IT service providers, VARs and MSPs today announced that VirtualTone has completed integration with ConnectWise. VirtualTone’s new feature, the VTone Sidebar(R), provides total integration of VirtualTone’s inbound and outbound IP calling capabilities with ConnectWise’s Business Automation Software to maximize the productivity and efficiency of ConnectWise partners.

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Dec 28, 2010 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) –
PeopleCube, provider of workplace management technology, foretold the business trends it believes will emerge-or continue to gain ground-in 2011.

According to a release, these include a greater emphasis on interactive dashboards, real-estate consolidation, expanded alignment between corporate real estate and facilities management, renewed focus on sustainability, mobile workforce expansion, greater emphasis on a collaborative team environment, and accelerated growth of software-as-a-service.

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As 2010 draws to a close, GreenBiz asked executives from a range of companies — all of whom have been featured in the news this year — to tell us about their most exciting green prospects, the challenges and the changes they anticipate for 2011, and what they think 2011 will look like from the perspective of 2012. Here’s what they told us.

What are you most excited about for 2011?

David Wilkerson, Corporate Director of Sustainability and Product Stewardship, Residential Division, Shaw Industries

We are eager to see the commercial market recovery trend that we experienced in the last half of 2010 continue. We are continuing to invest in innovative solutions for attacking the 3.5 billion pounds of post-consumer carpet waste that goes to landfills each year. In addition to our flagship Evergreen Recycling Facility, we recently launched Re2E, a reclaim to energy facility that will convert post-consumer carpet waste to steam energy and electricity to run a carpet manufacturing facility. We are expanding our purified carpet pellet production, which allows us to convert post-consumer carpet to other products, such as automobile parts. And lastly, we will continue to expand our carpet to carpet initiatives.

Joseph Danko, Director of Sustainable Solutions, CH2M HILL
 
With our current executive leadership and the tenacity and focus of our Collaborative Working Group we have been able to create new business opportunity areas, develop new technologies and form new business constructs that we couldn’t even see before. This has been made possible by leveraging our resources through the company, integrating expertise between our business groups and enabling innovation by creating diverse and focused teams. The platform and focus we have developed in 2010 has positioned us for significant additional growth in sustainable solutions throughout the firm in 2011.

Tim Carey, Director of Sustainability and Technology, PepsiCo Americas Beverages

Continuing to watch a growing number of consumers make buying decisions based on a product’s and company’s environmental commitments and performance. Consumers have the power to make incredible change in the world and we’re excited for them to help us make a positive impact.

Terry Yosie, President and CEO, World Environment Center

There are so many opportunities to generate progress through unique partnerships across the public, private and NGO sectors in all regions of the world. The ability to expand learning and creativity to solve practical problems in specific locations is very rewarding on a personal and professional level. A related source of excitement is to experience how intelligent and motivated people/organizations “get it” and can achieve impacts disproportionate to their size. I’m a great believer in non-linear thinking that is applied outside the context of existing decision making methods and hierarchies. Sustainable “coalitions of the willing” that emerge more-or-less spontaneously through self-generated networks possess an authenticity and skill sets that can frequently solve on-the-ground problems more effectively than larger and more established organizations.

SLOUGH, England, December 23, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
International
solutions provider, Logicalis (http://www.uk.logicalis.com/), today announced
that its high-density data centre (HDDC) and range of Made to Measure cloud
services are now natively connected into JANET (http://www.ja.net/), the
network dedicated to the needs of education and research in the UK.

Logicalis’ connection to the unique high bandwidth academic network will
provide a range of data centre and cloud services, including Infrastructure
as a Service, application hosting for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)
servicing the education community, through to high density hosting of
virtualisation and supercomputing environments.

The JANET network connects UK universities, Further Education (FE)
colleges, Research Councils, specialist colleges and Adult and Community
Learning providers, providing a shared network backbone and high performance
computing facilities at a national and international level.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs Service Providers at the ITEXPO East, February 2-4, 2011 Miami Beach Convention Center, FL.

Chris Gabriel, director of solutions and marketing for Logicalis UK,
commented; “Logicalis has been a trusted and innovative partner of the UK
higher and further education sector for many years, and bringing our data
centre and cloud services to the JANET user community further demonstrates
what can be achieved when the public and private sector work together. As
well as the services we have made available today, we also want to reach out
across the sector and to other service providers, such as ISVs, to maximise
what we have built for the benefit of the entire education community.”
Tim Kidd, operations director for JANET(UK), commented; “The connection
into Logicalis’ high density data centre and cloud services will provide
education institutions with a range of services dedicated to high performance
ICT environments and, through cloud, enable these to scale on-demand. It is
of benefit to the sector to have partners bring innovative new services and
solutions onto JANET, and we are pleased to have Logicalis’ data centre and
cloud services available to the entire community.”
Logicalis’ HDDC opened in June 2010, along with the launch of its cloud
services, as part of a GBP10million investment programme. A Tier 3+ facility
with the capability to support 4 to 32kw racks anywhere within the data
centre, it provides a Made to Measure home for high performance virtual
infrastructures and high power supercomputing environments. Services
available to the community include Infrastructure as a Service (compute,
storage, and network), on-demand disaster recovery, Cloud Hosting, and
Cooperative Cloud – enabling users to dual-locate ICT infrastructure between
their own site and Logicalis’ facility.

Simon Daykin, CTO at Logicalis, adds: “Many service providers peer with
the JANET network, but we have gone much further by natively extending JANET
into our data centre and cloud environment. This gives JANET’s users and our
existing education customers the ability to extend their campus into our
environment and benefit from highly virtualised cloud services and a
high-density infrastructure, without the constraints of the Internet or the
capital costs incurred through building a shared private network.

“JANET is one of the longest-running examples of successful shared
network services in the public sector, to which Logicalis is committed to
bringing its expertise and investment in shared and hosted ICT services,
helping facilitate and contribute to its future collaboration and innovation.”
Logicalis is piloting a number of solutions and services into the
education sector, including hosting of open source virtual learning
environments such as Moodle, as well as shared and hybrid cloud
infrastructure services which enable institutions to move part of their
internal infrastructure to a hosting provider.

Logicalis will be opening its doors to education ICT and business
professionals on February 23rd at an ICT in Education Innovation Day to
explore how cloud computing and data centre services may change the thinking
behind infrastructure and services deployment.

About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of integrated information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions and services founded on a superior
breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications collaboration; data
centre; and professional and managed services.

Logicalis Group employs over 1,900 people worldwide, including highly
trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and manage complex
ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of over 5,000 corporate and public
sector customers.

The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, a $3.7 billion
revenue business listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges.

For more information, visit http://www.uk.logicalis.com.

About JANET (UK)
JANET(UK) manages the operation and development of JANET on behalf of
JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) for the UK Further and Higher
Education Funding Councils. JISC also works in partnership with the Research
Councils. JANET(UK) is government funded, with the primary aim of providing
and developing a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the education
and research communities.

Contact:

Andrew Parker/Jennifer Manning
Cohesive Communications
T: +44(0)1291-626200
E: logicalis@cohesive.uk.com

SOURCE Logicalis UK

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