IBM to Build Asia's Largest Cloud Computing Center

IBM and the China-based Range Technology will build a cloud computing data center near Beijing that the companies claim will be Asia's largest by floor space. The 620,000 square meter facility, which is to be owned by Range Technology, is expected to be completed in 2016, the companies announced on Tuesday. The data center aims to mainly serve government departments from China's capital and across the country, but will also be open to banks and private enterprises.

The cloud computing center will be built in Langfang, a city between Beijing and Tianjin, in northern China. The data center is meant to support the development of a new information technology hub being built in the area, said IBM spokeswoman Harriet Ip.

IBM, the vendor for the project, did not disclose the cost of the data center. But the company said Range Technology is spending about US$1.49 billion on the building of the Langfang Range International Information Hub, of which the data center will be a part.

IBM says there has been growing demand for data centers and cloud computing in China. The company's data-center business in China has tripled in the last four years. In 2010, China overtook Japan as IBM's second largest data center market, with the U.S. as the company's number one market.

Range Technology could not be reached for comment. But the company said in a statement, "This initiative plays a critical role in the economic development of China in light of the pressing demand for managed hosting in the areas of cloud computing and mobile devices," according to its chairman Zhou Chaonan.

Range Technology, an Internet data center services provider, was founded in 2009. Earlier this month, the company and IBM formed a strategic partnership on cloud computing and software services.

Nokia Siemens Networks Expands Global Service Delivery Center

Nokia Siemens Networks has announced the relocation and expansion of its Global Network Solutions Center (GNSC) to a new site in Chennai, India. Since its launch in 2007, the Chennai GNSC has witnessed tremendous growth. This includes a ten-fold increase in the number of subscribers it supports on behalf of operators around the world to 77 million. In addition the center now remotely manages over 87,000 base station sites, 14 times the number when it opened four years ago.

The new facility, occupying 90,000 square feet, was inaugurated by Vishant Vora, Group CTO, Vodafone India in the presence of Armando Almeida, head of Global Services, Nokia Siemens Networks.

The Chennai GNSC was the first center set up by Nokia Siemens Networks in 2007 to pioneer its unique Global Service Delivery model providing remote delivery support across its services businesses including care, network implementation and managed services. It is one of three currently operating GNSCS, with two others in Noida, India and Lisbon, Portugal. Two* further service delivery centers are currently being established in Russia and Brazil as announced in 2010. All five are part of the company’s strategic response to the growing trend of operators outsourcing network management and maintenance as a way to increase efficiency and improve end-user experience.

“The expansion of the Chennai GNSC is a reflection of the success of the global service delivery model we pioneered,” said Armando Almeida. “The Chennai facility, with its vast engineering and telecom talent, has played a significant role in the success of our alternative service delivery model. This model allows us to centralize and consolidate operations for customers around the world. It provides significant cost savings and improved operational efficiency, freeing up resources to allow operators to focus on their business goals.”

Since 2007, the team at Chennai GNSC has grown from 120 people to over 1,000 supporting 77 million subscribers and 87,000 base stations on customers’ networks globally. The center currently provides remote services including planning, optimization services and complete network operation. It is also emerging as a Center of Competence for 3G and, together with Noida GNSC, has delivered 90 projects in 3G/HSPA globally.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ integrated, multi-technology, multi-vendor GNSCs are designed to help operators roll out new services rapidly through round-the-clock project management. The centers ensure high network and service performance through transparent Service Level Agreements and improved service delivery efficiency while reducing risks. By centralizing and consolidating resources at the three GNSCs, Nokia Siemens Networks delivers economies of scale to its customers and drives network efficiency through remote delivery, applying standardized and automated IT tools and processes.

iPad Rival, iTablet set To Start Selling March

So here comes the iPad nemesis! A large onscreen keyboard makes inputting text a simple process and, with 32GB storage capacity, itablet has plenty of room to download and store important documents, pictures, films, music, games, e-books, news and other content.

The integrated SD card reader enables photographs and other files to be viewed or uploaded and an HDMI output provides high quality playback of HD video and pictures through larger TV screens.  Audio playback can be through the built-in stereo speakers or stereo headphones.

Stanley Hsu, General Manager, AHX Global, said: "iTablet provides users with the same full desktop experience on the move that can be achieved with a laptop but in a more compact, lightweight and easy to use form factor."

iTablet is fully equipped with Bluetooth and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi networking enabling users to easily connect to wireless networks to download and edit files or access the internet.

Users can surf the internet, with full  Flash compatibility, using their choice of browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.  An integrated 2 mega-pixel webcam and microphone are also included for video and VoIP conferencing applications.

The company behind iTablet is AHX Global, a joint venture between X2 Computing, one of the UK's leading suppliers of mobile computing solutions and AMtek Systems, the leading Taiwanese designer of tablet computers.

AHX Global also simultaneously launched the W10², which is powered by an Intel Atom Z510 1.3GHz processor with 1GB DDR2 SDRAM running Windows 7 Starter Edition.  It shares the same features as the W10¹ but does not have a webcam or HDMI outputs.

The itablet W10¹  is to retail at $849.99 and itablet W10² will retail at $749.99. Deliveries of the Windows itablets will start in March.

SAS Analytics Lab tackles government’s most pressing issues

The SAS Analytics Lab for State and Local Government plans to add 100 new technology and government experts and arm them with the data analysis power of SAS’ new 38,000 square-foot cloud computing center. 

The lab partners with state and local leaders to improve government services with the latest in advanced analytics technology. It currently devotes the resources of more than 200 professional, mostly doctoral-level SAS experts to devising technology solutions to critical state and local government issues, such as fraud, waste, abuse, tax collection, public safety and education.

"At a time when we must maximize the use of every state dollar, we are grateful to have a company like SAS in the fight against fraud, waste and abuse in state government," said North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue. "Saving tax dollars and creating jobs are certainly high on my priority list."

Confident that interest in analytics by state and local governments will only increase, SAS plans to add more than 100 positions to the lab over the next two years. In addition to North Carolina, SAS plans to place technology and subject matter experts throughout the country, where new projects are announced. 

"The SAS Analytics Lab for State and Local Government focuses some of our most brilliant minds on today's most urgent challenges," said Paula Joshi, Vice President of SAS State and Local Government Practice. "The current model falters in an internationally competitive environment, as state and county governments face daunting budget deficits. Government technology leaders are not just looking for new solutions to old problems, but new strategies for technology investment."

The state and local lab expands the SAS Advanced Analytics Lab, led by John Brocklebank, PhD. The lab has grown at least 35 percent annually since its founding in 2000. "Demand for hosted services among state and local governments has risen sharply," said Brocklebank. "Bolstering our technical capabilities with subject matter experts gives state and local governments powerful and cost-effective options when they really need them."

SAS' Cloud Computing Center will quadruple SAS' capacity for data hosting. "Our ability to host data reduces risk for government customers and saves precious tax dollars on hardware and personnel," adds Joshi. "State and local government leaders have seen the efficiencies that technologies such as cloud computing, analytics and data integration have brought to the private sector, and more recently the government sector."

Several customers already embrace the hosted model:

The North Carolina Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data System (CJLEADS) integrates data from the state's various criminal justice applications, providing up-to-date criminal information in a secure, centralized location for use by state and local government criminal justice professionals. More than 1,000 users from criminal justice organizations in Wake County are currently training on or using the application. Several arrests have been attributed to the system.

Los Angeles County uses the hosted SAS® Fraud Framework for Government, which addresses such government concerns as detecting collusive patterns in entitlement programs, e.g. Medicare and Medicaid, to purchase-card fraud, bid-rigging and terrorist financing. LA County used SAS to uncover child-care benefits fraud, prevent public assistance fraud, and enhance district attorney investigations.

SAS' most enduring hosted solution is SAS® Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) for K-12 , with more than 1.7 million log-ins to date. EVAAS was a difference maker in the Race to the Top education reform effort – three winners have statewide implementations of SAS EVAAS for K-12 and six more have widespread use at the district level.

Tennessee, North Carolina and Ohio use SAS EVAAS for K-12 statewide to measure the effectiveness of districts, schools and teachers. It also predicts student performance on standardized tests, assessing how likely students are to succeed in milestone courses such as eighth-grade Algebra I.  

SAS is used in all 50 states and more than 115 local governments to transform their operations to deliver the right services, at the right time, with the appropriate resources. SAS offers a wide array of data integration, business intelligence and analytics solutions, and collaborates with government to create innovative offerings tailored to specific departmental and agency goals.

Google in Illegal Source-code saga

A well-known open source advocate has accused Google of copying at least seven and up to as many as 43 Android files directly from Oracle's Java source code. It's unclear whether the files were actually included with the shipping version of Android, but they were open-sourced by Google under an Apache license, and that alone could be legally problematic for the company. The search giant now faces an Oracle patent- and copyright-infringement lawsuit over the use of Java in Android.

"[The alleged copied code] is really about the Android's team's credibility, its approach to intellectual property issues," Florian Mueller, who spotted the files in question said. "This looks arrogant, reckless, aggressive. What does it imply about the team's overall approach?"

Last October, as part of its lawsuit, Oracle handed six pages of Android code to a federal court, claiming they were directly copied from Oracle Java code. This amounted to a single file, and in a court filing of its own, Google claimed Oracle's exhibit had been doctored by Larry Ellison and company.

But with a Friday post, FOSS Patents blogger Florian Mueller pointed to six additional Android files that "show the same pattern of direct copying" – apparently, Google used a decompiler – and he claimed that unlike the file in Oracle's exhibit, these files were part of the open source trees for the most recent Android releases: 2.2 (Froyo) and 3.3 (Ginderbread). He also turned up 37 other files tagged with "PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL" and "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE!" notices by Sun. "Unless Google obtained a license to that code (which is unlikely given the content and tone of those warnings), this constitutes another breach," said Mueller.

Google had also said that Oracle had removed headers from its exhibit, and according to Mueller, the missing headers also read "PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL". "I don't think that the missing parts are favorable to Google. Actually, the opposite is true," he wrote.Google did not respond to a request for comment.

As Google points out in a court filing, Android's Dalvik virtual machine uses a subset of Project Harmony, Apache Foundation's open source Java incarnation. But Apache has said that the code in Oracle's exhibit is not from Harmony. And though we've asked Apache about the other files turned up by Mueller, the foundation has yet to respond.

Oracle's exhibit and the six files where Mueller discovered what he believes to be similar copying are in the "unit test" area of the Android open source code tree. Mueller tells The Register he found the files by looking in the general vicinity of the file pinpointed by Oracle. As ZDNet's Ed Burnette points out, unit test code isn't likely to ship with a final product, and the files in question have been deleted from the tree. But they were still open-sourced.

If Google lifted the code from Sun, this may be problematic – whether Sun eventually open-sourced the code or not. Java was open-sourced under a GPL license, whereas Android uses the incompatible Apache license. "GPL is a one-way street," Mueller points out. "As a third party, you can't just turn a GPL file into an Apache file. It doesn't matter whether the Sun code was proprietary or GPL, because either way there's no way it could be licensed under Apache."

The 37 other files Mueller spotted are part of a zip file and appear to involve native code audio drivers. But these too were open-sourced.

At Last, VIA rolls out Dual-core Microprocessor

VIA Technologies, a developer of affordable low-power computing solutions, has announced its first dual-core central processing units (CPUs). The new chips arrive nearly six years after dual-core microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp. The developer of the processor claims that the Nano X2 chip is suitable for both desktop and mobile applications. Featuring two x86 cores, the VIA Nano X2 processor delivers up to double the performance on multi-thread optimized applications. Based on a 40-nm process, the device is built using its 64-bit, superscalar ''Isaiah'' architecture.

''Isaiah'' is also the architecture used for Via's single-core processors. It features a 64-bit speculative, out-of-order architecture. It also incorporates a front-side bus starting at 800-MHz.

The duo-core device also comes with SSE4, native 64-bit support, VT CPU virtualization technology and so-called PadLock hardware security features. VIA Nano X2 processors are also pin-to-pin compatible with previous VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors.

VIA Nano X2 processors are targeted for a range of PC products that include desktop, all-in-one and mobile notebook designs.

"The VIA Nano X2 processor arrives at a time when software architectures are now optimized to for multi-thread computing," said Richard Brown, vice president of international marketing for Taipei-based VIA, in a statement. ''Improvements in semi-conductor fabrication means we can now double the number of processor cores while maintaining the same low energy consumption levels that our customers are used to."

VIA Nano X2 processors samples are currently available for OEMs and motherboard vendors, with systems featuring the processors expected to arrive in Q1 2011.

Acer to launch 7-inch, 10-inch tablets by mid-year

 

Acer will begin selling two or three new tablet PCs in the first half of the year, including one with a seven-inch screen, a company sales manager said on Monday.

The tablet launches will begin a gradual replacement of Acer's small laptop-style netbook computers, in line with market demands, Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-hsian said.

"They are aimed at phasing out netbooks," he said. "That’s the direction of the market."

They will use Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors and run an Android operating system, Lu said. The largest will have a 10-inch screen, Lu said.

The Taiwan-based computer giant will keep making netbooks, adding to its millions sold to date, but it will stick to simple models and manufacture fewer than in years past as tablets gain popularity, he said

The tablets will run faster than laptops with Windows operating systems, and will use a four-core processor, he said. The company has not revealed any other product details. The tools will be made for common users, Lu said, rather than expressly for gamers.

Lu declined to estimate the sales price or the size of the first production run of new tablets.

Acer’s first tablet, a 12-inch version costing just under $1,000, sold 200 to 300 units per month until it was discontinued in July. Acer’s president and CEO hinted in October that more tablets were on the way.

The tablet market headed toward a boom last year after Apple released the iPad. Other companies have rivaled Acer in following the iPad with comparable products that use touchscreens. One is the Samsung Electronics Galaxy Tab.