IBM is suing one of its top executives, a server guru who is trying to take a job with Apple, where he would be working closely with CEO Steve Jobs. Mark Papermaster, a 26-year veteran of IBM, has knowledge of “significant and highly confidential IBM trade secrets” that would “irreparably harm” the company if he is allowed to work for Apple, IBM alleges in a suit filed in United States District Court in Manhattan on Oct. 22. Papermaster also signed a noncompetition agreement in 2006 pledging not to work for competitors for one year after the conclusion of his employment with IBM. The complaint says Papermaster was IBM’s top expert for its Power microprocessors and the vice president of IBM’s blade server development unit, until resigning on Oct. 21. Papermaster is also a member of IBM’s “elite” Integration & Values Team, a group of 300 senior managers charged with developing corporate strategy. “Recently, Mr. Papermaster informed his superiors at IBM that he intended to accept a position at Apple,” IBM’s complaint states. “On information and belief, Mr. Papermaster will become a senior executive and corporate officer at Apple and will work very closely with Apple’s Chief Executive Officer in providing to Apple technical and strategic advice on a variety of issues.” Apple competes against IBM in developing servers, PCs and microprocessors, IBM says, referring to Apple’s Xserve line of servers and Apple’s acquisition of P.A. Semi, a semiconductor that IBM also considers a competitor. (Compare server products.) IBM says it tried to lure Papermaster back with a substantial pay raise, and offered to pay him one year’s salary in exchange for Papermaster “refrain[ing] from working for an IBM competitor for one year.” Papermaster nonetheless decided to leave and work for Apple beginning in November, the complaint states. “Mr. Papermaster, as long as he is employed by Apple, will inevitably use and/or disclose IBM trade secrets for his own benefit and for the benefit of Apple,” IBM alleges. IBM is seeking an injunction preventing Papermaster from working for Apple and asks for monetary awards “as the court deems just and proper.” Reference : http://www.macworld.com/article/136499/2008/10/ibm_apple.html?lsrc=rss_main
Lenovo hit two different markets with dueling announcements this week. The PC maker announced a new ThinkCentre desktop with added remote manageability, as well as a low-cost netbook for the education market. The desktop is expected to start shipping in December and the netbook is slated to hit toward the end of November. The company yesterday also unveiled the ThinkServer line of servers. "Lenovo is trying to hold on to that business market," said Jim McGregor , an analyst with In-Stat . "With the desktops, they're going toward a manageability platform for business. It can be upgraded remotely. They can be monitored remotely. IT can even recognize hard drive problems or a virus attack before the user does." The new ThinkCentre desktop -- the M58/M58p -- uses Power Manager, which is designed to lower energy costs by enabling system administrators to remotely monitor and adjust the amount of electricity used by the PCs. For example, Lenovo noted that the PCs can be programmed to shut down evenings or weekends. The ThinkCentre M58/M58p also supports Hardware Password Manager, which enables administrators to remotely check on various system passwords and deal with issues that arise with them. Lenovo is also following the recent trend of PC makers churning out mini-laptops with the unveiling of its IdeaPad S10e netbook. The company noted that the ultra-portable is designed for students in K-12, as well as those in college. Weighing in at less than 3 pounds, the netbook runs Microsoft Windows XP Home or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell. "I think it's good for any company to get into the mobile area," said McGregor. "The market is moving faster than anyone predicted? And, yes, I think it's important for them to get into [netbooks]. Everyone is targeting Internet accessibility." Netbooks are relatively inexpensive, small-form-factor notebooks designed for basic applications, such as Web surfing, e-mailing and music downloads. They're designed to use less power than traditional laptops and aren't robust enough for serious power users or gamers. On Tuesday, Dell Inc. also unveiled a new netbook - the Inspiron Mini 12. And Acer, which is considered to be out front in the netbook market, came out with the Aspire One mini-laptop in June. Earlier this month, Gartner Inc. reported that mini-laptops have been keeping the PC market from sinking badly in the tough economy. A strong push from a new slew of mini-notebooks is bolstering what otherwise would be a soft PC market. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152986/lenovo_new_hardware.html?tk=rss_news
Memristor circuits lead to ultrasmall PCs. Intel and AMD unleash massively multicore CPUs. Samsung TVs respond to your every gesture. These and other developing technologies will fundamentally change the way you think about--and use--technology.The Next Big thing? The memristor, a microscopic component that can "remember" electrical states even when turned off. It's expected to be far cheaper and faster than flash storage. A theoretical concept since 1971, it has now been built in labs and is already starting to revolutionize everything we know about computing, possibly making flash memory, RAM, and even hard drives obsolete within a decade. The memristor is just one of the incredible technological advances sending shock waves through the world of computing. Other innovations in the works are more down-to-earth, but they also carry watershed significance. From the technologies that finally make paperless offices a reality to those that deliver wireless power, these advances should make your humble PC a far different beast come the turn of the decade. In the following sections, we outline the basics of 15 upcoming technologies, with predictions on what may come of them. Some are breathing down our necks; some advances are still just out of reach. And all have to be reckoned with. Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit32-Core CPUs From Intel and AMDNehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics BoardsUSB 3.0 Speeds Up Performance on External DevicesWireless Power Transmission64-Bit Computing Allows for More RAMWindows 7: It's InevitableGoogle's Desktop OSGesture-Based Remote ControlRadical Simplification Hits the TV BusinessCurtains for DRMUse Any Phone on Any Wireless NetworkYour Fingers Do Even More WalkingCell Phones Are the New PaperWhere You At? Ask Your Phone, Not Your Friend25 Years of PredictionsThe Future of Your PC's Hardware
Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit 
Photograph: Courtesy of HP Since the dawn of electronics, we've had only three types of circuit components--resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley researcher Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.
What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.
Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs. Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.
When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.
32-Core CPUs From Intel and AMD
Photograph: Courtesy of Intel If your CPU has only a single core, it's officially a dinosaur. In fact, quad-core computing is now commonplace; you can even get laptop computers with four cores today. But we're really just at the beginning of the core wars: Leadership in the CPU market will soon be decided by who has the most cores, not who has the fastest clock speed.
What is it? With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMD and Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continue to improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations. Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores and other components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometer processors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009.
When is it coming? Intel has been very good about sticking to its road map. A six-core CPU based on the Itanium design should be out imminently, when Intel then shifts focus to a brand-new architecture called Nehalem, to be marketed as Core i7. Core i7 will feature up to eight cores, with eight-core systems available in 2009 or 2010. (And an eight-core AMD project called Montreal is reportedly on tap for 2009.)
After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a 32-core project called Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its complexity (the company won't confirm this, though). That many cores requires a new way of dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32 brains pulling out of one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores to proliferate when the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012 is plausible (when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to 22nm), with 32 cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says "hundreds" of cores may come even farther down the line.
Nehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics Boards When AMD purchased graphics card maker ATI, most industry observers assumed that the combined company would start working on a CPU-GPU fusion. That work is further along than you may think.
What is it? While GPUs get tons of attention, discrete graphics boards are a comparative rarity among PC owners, as 75 percent of laptop users stick with good old integrated graphics, according to Mercury Research. Among the reasons: the extra cost of a discrete graphics card, the hassle of installing one, and its drain on the battery. Putting graphics functions right on the CPU eliminates all three issues.
Chip makers expect the performance of such on-die GPUs to fall somewhere between that of today's integrated graphics and stand-alone graphics boards--but eventually, experts believe, their performance could catch up and make discrete graphics obsolete. One potential idea is to devote, say, 4 cores in a 16-core CPU to graphics processing, which could make for blistering gaming experiences.
When is it coming? Intel's soon-to-come Nehalem chip includes graphics processing within the chip package, but off of the actual CPU die. AMD's Swift (aka the Shrike platform), the first product in its Fusion line, reportedly takes the same design approach, and is also currently on tap for 2009.
Putting the GPU directly on the same die as the CPU presents challenges--heat being a major one--but that doesn't mean those issues won't be worked out. Intel's two Nehalem follow-ups, Auburndale and Havendale, both slated for late 2009, may be the first chips to put a GPU and a CPU on one die, but the company isn't saying yet.
USB 3.0 Speeds Up Performance on External Devices The USB connector has been one of the greatest success stories in the history of computing, with more than 2 billion USB-connected devices sold to date. But in an age of terabyte hard drives, the once-cool throughput of 480 megabits per second that a USB 2.0 device can realistically provide just doesn't cut it any longer.
What is it? USB 3.0 (aka "SuperSpeed USB") promises to increase performance by a factor of 10, pushing the theoretical maximum throughput of the connector all the way up to 4.8 gigabits per second, or processing roughly the equivalent of an entire CD-R disc every second. USB 3.0 devices will use a slightly different connector, but USB 3.0 ports are expected to be backward-compatible with current USB plugs, and vice versa. USB 3.0 should also greatly enhance the power efficiency of USB devices, while increasing the juice (nearly one full amp, up from 0.1 amps) available to them. That means faster charging times for your iPod--and probably even more bizarre USB-connected gear like the toy rocket launchers and beverage coolers that have been festooning people's desks.
When is it coming? The USB 3.0 spec is nearly finished, with consumer gear now predicted to come in 2010. Meanwhile, a host of competing high-speed plugs--DisplayPort, eSATA, and HDMI--will soon become commonplace on PCs, driven largely by the onset of high-def video. Even FireWire is looking at an imminent upgrade of up to 3.2 gbps performance. The port proliferation may make for a baffling landscape on the back of a new PC, but you will at least have plenty of high-performance options for hooking up peripherals.
Wireless Power Transmission Wireless power transmission has been a dream since the days when Nikola Tesla imagined a world studded with enormous Tesla coils. But aside from advances in recharging electric toothbrushes, wireless power has so far failed to make significant inroads into consumer-level gear.
What is it? This summer, Intel researchers demonstrated a method--based on MIT research--for throwing electricity a distance of a few feet, without wires and without any dangers to bystanders (well, none that they know about yet). Intel calls the technology a "wireless resonant energy link," and it works by sending a specific, 10-MHz signal through a coil of wire; a similar, nearby coil of wire resonates in tune with the frequency, causing electrons to flow through that coil too. Though the design is primitive, it can light up a 60-watt bulb with 70 percent efficiency.
When is it coming? Numerous obstacles remain, the first of which is that the Intel project uses alternating current. To charge gadgets, we'd have to see a direct-current version, and the size of the apparatus would have to be considerably smaller. Numerous regulatory hurdles would likely have to be cleared in commercializing such a system, and it would have to be thoroughly vetted for safety concerns.
Assuming those all go reasonably well, such receiving circuitry could be integrated into the back of your laptop screen in roughly the next six to eight years. It would then be a simple matter for your local airport or even Starbucks to embed the companion power transmitters right into the walls so you can get a quick charge without ever opening up your laptop bag. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152683/tech.html?tk=rss_news
IBM is working on a Web-conferencing platform dubbed OpusUna, which offers all participants the ability to collaborate using the same Web pages and features audio and video. The AJAX-based technology was discussed by IBM officials during a briefing at the AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in San Jose, Calif. last week. "Really, what we're looking at is how I extend the whole concept of AJAX to allow multiple-user interactions," said David Boloker, CTO in the IBM Emerging Internet Technology Software Group. "It's all about a next-generation collaboration capability where you're really looking at how people interact with one another in a very different way," Boloker said. OpusUna enables participants to collaborate and communicate from within the same browser space, incorporating widgets, audio, and video cameras to display themselves on the screen. IBM envisions, for example, collaboration on patient care via sharing of medical images. Financial traders also could collaborate from around the world. The difference between OpusUna and other collaboration platforms is with OpusUna, all participants can contribute content as opposed to having one person serving as a presenter, IBM said. Cooperative meetings can be held. The OpusUna software, which IBM has deployed on a Linux system, pulls together the various parts of a collaboration. It leverages HTML, JavaScript, and CSS; Flash and Silverlight content could be brought in via a wrapped widget. IBM is currently working with the Safari browser, but plans call for extending the software to Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in the first quarter of 2009 IBM plans to show OpusUna to customers in early 2009 before deciding on how to proceed with the technology. The technology arose out of the company's QEDWiki mashup project, providing a next step that incorporates audio and video. OpusUna is so named for a Latin expression for "work together" or "work as one," Boloker said. Also at AJAXWorld on Tuesday, the next generation of JSF (JavaServer Faces), which is version 2.0, was noted. Due out at the end of this year, JSF 2.0 features accommodations for AJAX as well as other improvements, said Roger Kitain, staff engineer for Java EE Engineering at Sun. An early draft review of JSF 2.0 is under way. JSF features server-side components for building Web applications. It offers client device independence. Developers can use various render kits with JSF to determine, for example, how the applications will render in a browser. Featured in version 2.0 is AJAX standardization, Kitain said. There are a lot of JSF AJAX frameworks, and each tries to solve the same problem in different ways. "We'd like to standardize on some common features in the specification," said Kitain. A standard JavaScript API is being pondered for interaction with JSF over AJAX. JSF and AJAX are being paired because JSF offers server-side robustness, while AJAX offers rich Web application capabilities, said Kitain. JSF proponents would like for components developed in different JSF-AJAX frameworks, such as Dynamic Faces and Ajax4jsf, to be more compatible, he said. Developers could use multiple components within different frameworks within the same Web application, Kitain said. Version 2.0 also seeks to make it easier to develop custom components by moving away from JavaServer Pages as JSF's view technology and moving toward Facelets, Kitain said. Facelets, he said, is more of a lightweight technology closer to HTML syntax. Also planned for JSF 2.0 is use of Java annotations to ease the burden of XML configurations; improved performance for the JSF state-saving mechanism, which saves the state of the UI, is another improvement. Once JSF 2.0 is released, its proponents hope the new specification is used both in applications and tools. There are already two major implementations: Sun's Mojarra and Apache MyFaces, Kitain said. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152771/ibm_web_collaboration.html?tk=rss_news
Switch Vendors Can Reach a Broader Set of Clients with a Single Product ARMONK, NY and SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- October 23, 2008 -- IBM and Intel Corporation today announced they are extending their collaboration in the blade server market to drive adoption of an open industry specification for blade switches. This will enable switch vendors to maximize return on their research and development by developing products to a single design, reaching more customers with just one product. Switches are essential components of every blade system, channeling data to and from the server. As part of the agreement announced today, IBM will extend the BladeCenter switch specification for blade servers to the Server Systems Infrastructure (SSI) organization on a royalty-free basis, allowing switch vendors to create one product that works across the BladeCenter and SSI ecosystems and driving more switch products for clients to choose from. The companies also announced plans to work together to establish a third-party Switch Compliance Lab, where the developer community can test and verify their blade server products for BladeCenter and SSI environments. The announcement today builds upon a history of IBM and Intel collaboration on blade technology -- starting in 2002 with the development of the first BladeCenter servers and continuing in 2006 when IBM, Intel and other industry leaders formed Blade.org, the industry consortium driving open innovation in blade-based solutions that today has over 200 members. SSI is an industry organization established over 10 years ago to enable server builders to develop compliant and interoperable building blocks for blade, chassis and manageability software technology. The incorporation of the open switch specification into SSI is intended to broaden the market for switch module vendors as they collaborate on SSI-specified blade switch solutions with Intel and IBM. In this segment, Blade Network Technologies, Brocade, NextIO and others have committed their support for the open specification. By extending its switch specification and ecosystem to affiliated members of SSI, IBM is driving greater adoption of BladeCenter-compatible switches. "The extension of the BladeCenter switch specification and ecosystem to SSI advances open specifications for blade systems," says Alex Yost, vice president of IBM BladeCenter. "Making the switch design in our open BladeCenter specification available to a broader set of vendors demonstrates IBM's commitment to foster openness in the blade server market." Demand for a common switch specification comes at a time when blade servers are becoming a critical ingredient in IT infrastructure. The availability of the open BladeCenter switch specification to SSI members allows them access to the more than 25 specification-compliant switches on the market today. "By working with IBM, we have expanded ecosystem support for SSI blade specifications to over 70 vendors," says Kirk Skaugen, General Manager, Server Platforms Group, Intel. "Continued IBM and Intel collaboration will go further to expanding the entire blade server market. This is good for customers who will benefit from increased choice from a breadth of server, networking and storage vendors while enabling each product to maximize return on the R&D invested." Reference : http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20081023comp.htm?cid=rss-90004-c1-216989
Intel and IBM have agreed to open up IBM's BladeCenter switch technology for more server makers to use, part of an initiative to spur adoption of a specification for low-cost blade servers. "We will be taking the BladeCenter switch specification and opening it up for access, royalty-free access, to any SSI adopter," said Kirk Skaugen [CQ], vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group, during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei. SSI, or the Server System Infrastructure Forum, is an industry group that was established by Intel to define server standards. Last year, SSI released a draft specification for low-cost blade servers that did not include all of the components required to build a blade server. "The piece, quite candidly, that was missing if you're going to build a whole blade system was the switch specification," Skaugen said. "This will be the final puzzle piece to complete a full blade system," he said, adding that the final SSI specification for blade servers should be ready by the end of the year. The SSI specification is aimed at smaller server makers and regional players, such as India's HCL Infosystems and Tyan in Taiwan. The SSI blade specification is designed to reduce manufacturing costs for these companies by setting standards for various components, such as power supplies and motherboards. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152664/.html?tk=rss_news
IBM is targeting midsize business customers that use Linux with a new "baby" mainframe that costs just a fraction of the amount charged for the high-end mainframe IBM released in February. The System z10 Business Class (z10 BC), announced Tuesday and generally available now, follows in the tradition of IBM refreshing its primary mainframe product and then following up several months later with a stripped-down, cheaper version, says Forrester analyst Brad Day. But the so-called "baby mainframe" is a pretty strong machine on its own, and lets IBM compete more aggressively against various RISC and Itanium-based servers as well as high-end x86 and x64 machines, Day says. ( Compare server products) "This is a Paul Bunyan version of the baby mainframe," he says. IBM is clearly making a move against vendors like HP, Sun and Fujitsu who are targeting legacy customers with mainframe migration programs, Day says. IBM has optimized the mainframe for Linux, working with Red Hat and Novell to fix bugs and ensure that all drivers run solidly with the Linux operating system, says System z marketing vice president Karl Freund. IBM executives also decided the mainframe simply wasn't cheap enough to convince customers to run new Linux workloads, he says. IBM lowered by 50% the cost of a specialty engine that lets the business-class mainframe run Linux, bringing the price of this add-on capability down to $47,500, according to Freund. Application servers, databases and Web servers will probably be the most common Linux applications to run on the new business-class machine, he says. "We're continuing to make the mainframe more mainstream, more interesting to new customers, and more interesting to medium-sized businesses," he says. IBM's mainframe has supported Linux for five years, and Big Blue is increasing its push on this front because Linux because is becoming a more sophisticated enterprise-class operating system, Freund says. The mainframe doesn't have a way to run Windows workloads but "It's something we're certainly interested in exploring," he adds. The z10 BC is nearly 40% faster and has nearly four times the maximum memory of its predecessor, IBM says. The new business-class mainframe delivers capacity equal to 232 x86 servers, while the high-end mainframe is equal to nearly 1,500 x86 servers, IBM says. With the exception of IBM, the mainframe market is pretty much dead, Day says. Customers that have never owned a mainframe are often wary of buying one, but IBM has tried to reinvent the system to operate new workloads, such as ones more commonly run on RISC and Itanium processors. Day says the effort has been successful, as much of IBM's mainframe growth over the last two years can be attributed to new workloads rather than upgrades to pre-existing machines. The mainframe has always run data-intensive transaction processing applications such as those used in the financial and utility industries, Day notes. Now it's getting better at running compute-intensive workloads that demand high amounts of CPU and memory, he says. The basic pricing of z10 BC starts at under $100,000, about the same as the previous business class mainframe. Typical deals will range from $250,000 to $500,000 Freund says. The top-of-the-line z10 mainframe announced in February starts at $1 million and the price increases dramatically depending on the configuration. IBM argues that the new business-class mainframe can be more cost-effective than x86 servers because eight x86 machines can be consolidated onto a single mainframe processing core. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152646/ibm_z10_baby_mainframe.html?tk=rss_news
IBM on Tuesday announced plans to expand a hardware design center in Taiwan due to the strong engineering work being done at the fledgling operation. The company's Taiwan Systems and Technology Laboratory (TSTL) has grown from a small lab in 2004 to become a major Asia-Pacific design center for IBM, now responsible for several major server products, IBM executives said at a news conference Thursday. Next year, IBM will start hiring more engineers for the lab to handle an increasing work load, said Jan Janick, vice president of modular server and storage development at IBM. The company plans to expand the lab to 400 workers, up from just over 200 now. TSTL has developed over 30 new products in the past two years, including BladeCenter servers, DataPower products, single socket tower/rack systems, retail store kiosks and digital cash registers as well as other hardware. The lab has also been taking a central role in developing servers aimed at emerging markets. TSTL created the X3100 tower and X3610 rack servers, low-cost servers for businesses in developing countries. The lab has won two patents so far, including one for a Method and Apparatus for fastening heat exchanger. Most of IBM's design and development work is still done in the U।S., an executive said, but transferring some of the work overseas both shortens development time and ensures there are IBM engineers able to work with customers anywhere in the world. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/151207/.html?tk=rss_news
IBM and a key Taiwanese research group agreed Wednesday to further develop racetrack memory chips and to find more product areas for Cell processors. Racetrack memory chips are a new technology developed by IBM to replace today's hard disk drives (HDDs) and NAND flash memory to store songs, photos and other data in products ranging from iPods and iPhones to PCs. A joint development team led by Stuart Parkin of IBM, who came up with the idea for racetrack memory, and the vice president of Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute ( ITRI), Ian Chan, will study new materials and structures that can be used to further develop the memory chips. IBM's desire to work with the Taiwanese group shows how serious the company is about developing and selling products related to racetrack memory and Cell technology. Taiwanese companies are responsible for the design and manufacture of much of the world's IT hardware, including for companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Working with ITRI will help improve the chances racetrack memory chips and Cell processors will be used in new products designed in Taiwan. IBM has long been lauded for its research efforts but some analysts have criticized the company for not always being able to turn costly research into profitable products. Chip development is especially tricky. Companies often develop powerful chips that ultimately end up in the IT graveyard because nobody can figure out a cost-effective way to mass-produce them. "Finding cost efficient ways to manufacture IT products is one of Taiwan's strengths," said Lee Chih-kung, executive vice president of ITRI. ITRI is a publicly funded Taiwanese research center that has a long history of working with Taiwan's IT industry, including developing new industries. The founder and chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), Morris Chang, formerly ran ITRI and even started his company on ITRI's grounds. As part of the development effort around racetrack, researchers from IBM will travel to Taiwan a few times each year, officials said. At least one ITRI researcher will spend three years at IBM in the U.S. working on related projects. IBM has said it may take up to four years to develop working racetrack memory chips that can be commercially manufactured. The company says racetrack memory runs faster than current storage memory, costs less, uses less power, gives off less heat, can store 100 times more data, and won't wear out no matter how many times data is erased and rewritten. One weakness of NAND flash, for example, is that some varieties can only be written on 10,000 times. IBM's development work with Sony and Toshiba on the Cell Broadband Engine, a processing chip with nine independent cores on board, is an example of collaborative success for the U.S. giant. The chip and related technology are now found in a range of Japanese products, including Sony's PlayStation 3 game consoles. ITRI plans to open a Cell product development center at its campus in Hsinchu, the Silicon Valley of Taiwan, so companies from around the island can find ways to use the technology in new products। Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/151169/.html?tk=rss_news
IBM is testing a voice-based web to make information accessible to users who may not be able to read or write, or who do not have access to the Internet. A "Spoken Web" project, currently being piloted by IBM's India Research Laboratory (IRL), aims to take advantage of the rapid proliferation of mobile phones in emerging countries like India. "The penetration of the PC and the Internet is not as high as that of the mobile phone, so we want to ensure that everything that is done on a web browser on a PC can be done with a mobile phone," said Guruduth Banavar, director of IRL, in a telephone interview on Thursday. The Spoken Web technology will enable local communities to create and disseminate locally relevant content, and interact with e-commerce sites using the spoken word over the telephone instead of the written word, Banavar said. Using technologies such as VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language) and HSTP (hyper speech transfer protocol), Spoken Web mirrors the World Wide Web in a telecom network where people can create and browse "VoiceSites" that have their own URLs (uniform resource locator), traverse "VoiceLinks", and conduct business transactions, according to IBM. The technology is about a world-wide telecom web of VoiceSites, which can be thought of as websites accessible over voice, and which are situated on a telephony network rather than the Internet, Banavar said. Users can access the voice-based web using a toll-free number, through a variety of ways including a voice recognition system or a tone phone. VoiceSites can be also created over the phone, using a set of templates on the server side, he added. The web of VoiceSites can potentially link to the World Wide Web, but the sites on the Web would have to be converted to support spoken interfaces, both via VoiceXML, and in how the content is designed and laid out, Banavar said. The research lab expects its technology to be relevant to a variety of users looking for information and wanting to engage in transactions. These would include farmers who need to look up commodity prices, fishermen in need of weather information before heading out to sea, plumbers offering their services, and retail businesses like grocery shops that can list products, offer order placement, have personalized targeted advertisements, or set up reminders, IBM said. Getting a Spoken Web up and running will however require the participation of a number of businesses and agencies including those offering financial services, Banavar said. The researchers at IRL decided to focus on a voice-based web to address the information requirements of local communities because of the rapid proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries like India. Using PCs was also not practical because PCs cost more, and Internet penetration to most local communities is low, Banavar said. Most users are also not at ease with PCs and very often cannot read or write, Banavar said. IBM is already doing pilots of the Spoken Web with some undisclosed mobile service providers in India, including one with associations working with visually impaired users। The strategy for the commercialization of the technology in India and other markets will be worked out by IBM's business groups, Banavar said. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/150938/.html?tk=rss_news
IBM is set to release a wave of new products for business event processing, IBM's preferred term for complex event processing (CEP), executives said at an event in Boston on Tuesday. In general, BEP and CEP software looks for patterns and correlations in the sea of electronic transactions or "events" that occur in a business, and triggers responsive actions depending on what is detected. For example, if a financial services company's system sees a customer's account undergo an address change, a password change and a large withdrawal in a single day, "that's a good indication fraud is going on," said Tom Rosamilia, a general manager in IBM's software group, during a talk previewing the upcoming software. BEP products scheduled for release between now and the end of the year include WebSphere Business Events V6.2. The software incorporates technology acquired from the purchase of AptSoft, and includes tooling aimed at getting rank-and-file business users into the BEP loop. "I don't want to have to code the application, I want the business author to be able to go in and specify what they want to see: 'If these three things happen in a certain period of time, let me know,' " Rosamilia said. Another planned release, WebSphere Business Events eXtreme Scale V6.2, focuses on improving performance and throughput for customers with more demanding volumes. "Think of this as literally thousands of [Java virtual machines] able to run this environment in a grid, and taking this information and being able to correlate incredible numbers of events," Rosamilia said. IBM is also planning to release the CICS Transaction Server Support Pac. This will allow the CISC server, which runs on mainframes, to emit events that can be captured by WebSphere Business Events, he said. IBM claims to have 3,770 customers using software in its BEP lineup, including 18 of the top 20 Fortune 500 companies and the 20 biggest banks on the Global 500. It competes with companies such as Tibco in the space. While largely the province of big enterprises, the technology could trickle down into the midmarket, but probably in an indirect manner, said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group, in an interview Tuesday. "I think in the short term it is the biggest institutions that will be the primary participants," Mills said. "But like anything else, companies exist in ecosystems. Smaller-sized businesses have relationships with larger ones." However, usage of event-processing technology has gone well beyond its roots in the financial services community, evidenced by IBM customer ActiveCare Network, which uses the vendor's BEP software to help coordinate vaccination, injection and infusion services for its 2 million members around the country. While health care expenses are rising quickly each year, "most of the costs are really coming in around the services associated with providing the drugs to patients" and not the drugs themselves, said CIO Tom Brady. Meanwhile, there's a "huge pipeline" containing more drugs in development, he added. Some 70 percent will require clinical oversight, and 30 percent will need training services for patients who will self-administer them, Brady said. Pricing will be announced when the new IBM products are released। They will be rolled out globally, IBM said. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/150854/.html?tk=rss_news
Lenovo and EMC on Wednesday announced an effort to free small businesses from the hassles of data backup by offering an unlimited Mozy storage service for Lenovo's SL series laptops. In the first such deal for the Mozy division, buyers of the small-business SL laptops will be able to sign up for a special hosted service for backing up an unlimited amount of data. With the regular Mozy Pro service, subscribers pay per gigabyte and per user. The Lenovo Online Data Backup offering with unlimited storage is priced at US$79.20 per year for a limited time and, so far, is available only in English in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. The regular price will be $99 per year. By year's end, Lenovo aims to offer it in more countries and in six other languages. Data protection has become a more critical concern with growing documentation requirements and increasing reliance on IT, even by small companies. Mozy's services let users back up the data on their PCs without having to buy and manage storage capacity. Mozy has its roots in backup services for consumers but is trying to expand its reach to businesses. It started offering Mozy Pro last year and was acquired by EMC in October. Of Mozy's approximately 850,000 subscribers, only about 23,000 are businesses. With Mozy, users can have backups run without closing their files or shutting down applications, according to the company. They can also set how much of their Internet bandwidth the backup service takes up while it's working. With the introduction of the Lenovo-branded service, Mozy is also upgrading its system for privately managed encryption to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) from the Blowfish technology that it has previously used, said Devin Knighton, a Mozy spokesman. The stronger encryption is also available to other Mozy users. The Lenovo-branded service is designed specifically for individual users in small businesses, unlike Mozy Pro, which costs $3.95 per user license per month in addition to $0.50 per gigabyte of storage per month. In addition to the unlimited service, buyers of the Lenovo laptops can get a service with a 50G-byte ceiling for $48.99 per year for a limited time, with a regular price of $69. They can also try out Lenovo Online Data Backup with a free three-month trial that has a 5G-byte limit. Also on Wednesday, Mozy announced it has opened its first data center outside the U.S., in Dublin. The new center will help businesses in Europe meet European Union data-privacy laws that require information to be stored within the E.U., and it should increase international use of Mozy, Knighton said. Today, only about 25 percent of Mozy users are outside the U.S., he said. The six additional languages set for later this year are French, German, Italian, Japanese, Universal Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and more will come next year, according to Knighton। He did not detail the additional rollout by countries. Eventually, the service will be available worldwide, he said. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/150635/.html?tk=rss_news
For most small to midsized businesses, software means Microsoft. For almost any category of business software -- from word processing to spreadsheets, presentations to communication and collaboration -- Microsoft is the de facto vendor of choice. Alternatives do exist, but who wants to be the first one to rock the boat? Microsoft has grown so cocky about its position that it even bragged that it would soon steal five million users away from IBM's Lotus Notus, a competitor to its own Outlook and Exchange. That's not the kind of threat that IBM takes lying down. On the contrary; it's digging in. Big Blue claims that it is redoubling its efforts to win customers away from Microsoft, beginning with a big win in Asia and new partnerships with major Linux vendors. First, says IBM, just because Microsoft enjoys seemingly unshakeable dominance of the U.S. business software market doesn't mean that has to be the case everywhere. Big Blue sees a big opportunity for its own software in Asia and other emerging markets, and it's backing up that speculation with real numbers. Just last week it announced a single deal with an as-yet-unnamed Asian company that it says will add 300,000 new seats to its Lotus Notes business. One major selling point of Notes over Outlook is that while every PC that runs Outlook must also purchase a Windows license, Notes also runs on Linux. Per-seat licensing for commercial Linux distributions is typically lower than that of Windows, and community-maintained Linux distributions can be downloaded and installed for free. IBM is hoping that the low total cost of a PC running Notes on Linux will make such systems attractive to cost-conscious customers in emerging markets. To further up the ante, IBM announced on Tuesday that it has forged partnerships with major hardware and Linux vendors to ensure that installing IBM business software on Linux systems is as painless as possible. Soon, Linux users will be able to obtain versions of IBM's Lotus Foundations software that have been specially packaged for installation on Novell Suse, Red Hat, or Ubuntu Linux. Lotus Foundations is a software bundle that includes not just Notes, but also the Sametime enterprise instant messaging system and Symphony, IBM's competitor to the Microsoft Office productivity suite. By prepackaging it for the top three desktop Linux distributions, IBM stands to make Foundations a one-click install for the majority of business Linux customers. This is certainly encouraging news for anyone who is seeking an alternative to the Microsoft-dominated business software market, particularly in emerging markets such as Asia. Whether any of this momentum will translate into increased sales for IBM's software over Microsoft's in the U.S., however, remains to be seen. What do you think? Are you itching to break Microsoft's grip on your business? Will easier access to IBM's alternative software make you more likely to switch to the Lotus platform, or are you more interested in Web-based software such as Google Apps? Or, on the other hand, do you feel that there simply isn't any genuine competition for Microsoft's business software? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums। Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149467/ibm_challenges_microsoft_for_the_smb_desktop.html?tk=rss_news
IBM today announced that it is spending $300 million to expand its business continuity and disaster recovery business, adding 13 facilities around the world to address what it described as a surge in demand from businesses and governments. The company said the investment is the largest of its kind in IBM's 40-year history in the business continuity and resiliency industry. Stan Clanton, vice president of infrastructure at InfoUSA Services Group, said he's excited about the prospects of IBM expanding its overseas business continuity and resiliency services. "Part of our direction is to expand internationally," he said. "The value of having an international partner will make it more convenient for me to deal with potential recoveries internationally." InfoUSA is a $750 million direct-mail services and consumer database information company in Omaha. Clanton said he uses only IBM's recovery service for his mainframe environment and has an internal recovery architecture for InfoUSA's 1,400 servers and various storage arrays. IBM said it will build new "Business Resilience Centers" in cities including Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, London, Warsaw and New York, as well as Izmir, Turkey; Milan, Italy; and Cologne, Germany. They will open this year and will house IBM's latest remote data management and information-protection capabilities, including the storage, replication and recovery of data and business applications for the first time from a cloud-computing-based environment. In addition, IBM said it is accelerating the build-out of its Information Protection Services business to deliver cloud-based computing services to support business continuity. Those services use technology gained from IBM's acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions Worldwide Inc. earlier this year and combine IBM hardware with storage management software in a fully configured, rack-mounted storage appliance known as a data-protection "vault." IBM has more than 150 business-resilience centers worldwide। Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/150148/ibm_pumps_300m_into_business_continuity_centers.html
IBM on Monday said it had invented technology that could reduce power consumption and speed up performance of processors used in PCs, servers and other devices. The company has shrunk the smallest features in test memory chips used in CPUs to 22 nanometers, which could enable processors to have more features and perform more quickly while consuming less power. The memory chips, called static random access memory (SRAM) cells, are part of a CPU where data is temporarily stored before being processed. Reducing the memory cell's size is one step in shrinking the entire microprocessor, said Mukesh Khare, project manager at IBM. The company hopes to see CPUs manufactured using the 22-nm process by 2011, Khare said. With the smaller features, IBM could put more functions on a smaller chip, such as adding 3-D graphics or animation capabilities, or put graphics chips inside microprocessors, Khare said. "As the number of cores (in CPUs) increases, the demand for more and more memory inside microprocessors grows dramatically. Making sure that we can continue to grow memory on microprocessors is a basic requirement for scaling," Khare said. A nanometer equals about one billionth of a meter. In chip manufacturing, the figure refers to the smallest features on chip surfaces. Chip manufacturers are constantly upgrading chip manufacturing technologies for power savings and speed gains. Intel, a rival to IBM for some kinds of chips, manufactures chips using a 45-nm process, with plans to switch to a 22-nm process by 2011. IBM has said it will switch to the 45-nm manufacturing process this year. "We can continue the scaling or miniaturization of the circuits for several more generations. There is still a lot more room for development," Khare said. Research on the SRAM cell was done by IBM and its partners, including Advanced Micro Devices, Freescale, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba, at the University of Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering। A small manufacturing unit there produced the test SRAM chips. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149979/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news
Lenovo on Tuesday added some power to its venerable ThinkPad line, launching a laptop with a quad-core processor that could be its highest-performing notebook to date. The ThinkPad W700, designed as a workstation alternative, also offers close to 1T byte of storage and packs multimedia features to complement the speedy processor. Targeted at users such as digital content creators who need solid graphics and data crunching capabilities, the notebook was under development for 18 months, said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager at Lenovo. It is an addition to the W-line of ThinkPad laptops that includes the ThinkPad W500, introduced earlier this year. Three optional hard drives, boasting capacities of 320G bytes apiece, plug into different slots to bring the storage capacity close to 1T byte. Also on offer is a 64G byte solid-state drive, and though its current capacity dwarfs hard drive storage, it will increase over time, Williams said. The W700 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core mobile processor that runs at a frequency of 2.53GHz and includes 12M bytes of L2 cache. It supports up to 8G bytes of RAM. The laptop comes with a 17-inch screen that displays video at a 1920-by-1200 pixel resolution, a notch higher than a high-definition display of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It comes with an Nvidia Quadro FX graphics card, and a Blu-ray player and burner is available as an option. Interesting multimedia features in the laptop include an optional digitizer and color calibrator. The digitizer, which is next to the touchpad, allows the input of data using a stylus, and the color calibrator adjusts the display's color to accurately reflect image depth. Priced starting at US$2,980, the W700 will be available starting in September through the company's retail partners. The company didn't say if it would be available worldwide. Lenovo has been pushing itself into different market areas by expanding its laptop offerings. Last week the company announced its first subnotebooks, the IdeaPad S9 and S10, priced under $550. It also announced a range of laptops targeted at the consumer and business market last month, including the ThinkPad X200, which weighs around 3।58 pounds (1.34 kilograms) and provides close to nine hours of battery life on a single charge. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149697/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news
More than any other official sponsor at the Beijing Olympics, Lenovo may have the most to gain -- and the most to lose -- as a Chinese company trying to reach a worldwide market. Still the strongest name in computing in China, despite threats from foreign makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, the company, which has headquarters both in Beijing and North Carolina, has struggled to break into the top three in the U.S. after buying IBM's PC division in 2004. Currently it ranks fourth, trailing Taiwan rival Acer which was boosted in part by its acquisition of Gateway last year. For Lenovo, the Beijing Olympics is also a finale of sorts. It is the company's last as a worldwide partner for the Olympics, and as such, it needs maximum bang for its marketing buck this time around. Part of that will come through solid performance as one of the Beijing games' biggest suppliers of computing hardware. Training for Beijing began in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in 2006. "We prepped for two years for [the 2006 Winter Olympics in] Torino, and Beijing is four times the size of Torino," said Wu Min, the company's director of technical support for its Olympic business unit. As it is for all of the Olympic IT suppliers, preparing for the games is a marathon, not a sprint. Lenovo will supply 30,000 devices and have undergone a two-year testing cycle before the opening ceremonies on Friday. The Olympics has another requirement not so immutable in other IT projects. "No second chance. There is no second chance, so we need to be ready and have back-ups in place," Wu said. Lenovo equipment in use includes 12,000 ThinkCentre M55e desktop computers -- chosen for their lower power consumption, in line with Beijing's "Green Olympics" theme -- with 10,000 17-inch TFT screens and 2,000 15-inch touchscreen displays; 2,000 LJ7800N and LJ3500 printers; 800 ThinkPad T60 and Zhaoyang 680 notebooks; 700 SureServer T350, R630 and R520 servers, all of which are Intel-based; and 5,000 various showcase models for use by Olympic partners sponsors, and for marketing. Lenovo's hardware was chosen early in the process, when the company first began working with BOCOG in 2004. While not necessarily top of the line, the hardware is well-known to the team and therefore easier to maintain. These Olympics have a particular set of demands. For example, although Beijing is relatively dry, even during the summer, events are being held in numerous locations, including humid locations such as Qingdao and Hong Kong, and therefore, machines had to be ready to handle a variety of conditions, Wu said. Also, because thousands of broadcasters will use their terminals to connect to the Commentator Information System (CIS) in order to provide live commentary to their audiences, BOCOG insisted on quiet machines that would not exceed 30 decibels. On staff during the Olympics will be about 600 Lenovo engineers, selected out of 12,000 potential candidates through an exam system that made serving in the Olympics business unit an honor. Following tests for engineering knowledge, technical skill and English-language ability, candidates came to Beijing for four weeks of training. Those serving at venues around Beijing and at venues in other cities, such as football (soccer) stadiums in Shanghai or sailing venues in Qingdao, received a further three days of orientation and training upon arrival. Team leaders come from Beijing headquarters, Wu said, and staff in venue cities were mostly chosen from local staff whenever possible. Aside from providing helpdesk support for its own products, Lenovo engineers would also be available at the press centers to assist journalists and other accredited Olympic visitors with non-Lenovo computers, including rescue and recovery services and anti-virus help. This is a first for an Olympic technical partner, Wu said. The biggest challenge Lenovo has faced so far has not been technical, but linguistic. "The major challenge is the language," said Wang Lei, director of technology for the Olympic business unit. Although Lenovo conducted advanced English classes for its engineers, and required that each pass a proficiency test prior to joining the company's Olympic team, some members still have trouble with "accented" English and "fast, excited speech," especially as many at the games are using English as a second-language themselves. Wu said that despite the Olympics' unique requirements, the experience has taught him and his company three things that will apply to future ventures. First is, "how to support complicated and huge projects," having dealt with the games' scale and long testing cycle. Second has been how to adapt products and design to the user's needs. "Initially, in Torino, some of those products were selling only in China. Now they are selling worldwide. The user experience is entirely different. It helps us address different requirements of international vendors and their expectations for customer satisfaction. It taught us how to meet those requirements." Finally, it taught Lenovo how to handle ad hoc organizations. "Now we know how to address this, in terms of negotiation, prioritization, and bringing together different levels of experience," Wu said. Wu will be based out of the Technical Operations Center in the Digital Headquarters (DHQ), at the northwest corner of Beijing's Olympic Park। He has a simple measure for success on the night of August 8 and throughout the 16 days of competition. "If I'm lucky, I'll be watching the games. That means everything is working well," Wu said. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149522/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news
For most small to midsized businesses, software means Microsoft. For almost any category of business software -- from word processing to spreadsheets, presentations to communication and collaboration -- Microsoft is the de facto vendor of choice. Alternatives do exist, but who wants to be the first one to rock the boat? Microsoft has grown so cocky about its position that it even bragged that it would soon steal five million users away from IBM's Lotus Notus, a competitor to its own Outlook and Exchange. That's not the kind of threat that IBM takes lying down. On the contrary; it's digging in. Big Blue claims that it is redoubling its efforts to win customers away from Microsoft, beginning with a big win in Asia and new partnerships with major Linux vendors. First, says IBM, just because Microsoft enjoys seemingly unshakeable dominance of the U.S. business software market doesn't mean that has to be the case everywhere. Big Blue sees a big opportunity for its own software in Asia and other emerging markets, and it's backing up that speculation with real numbers. Just last week it announced a single deal with an as-yet-unnamed Asian company that it says will add 300,000 new seats to its Lotus Notes business. One major selling point of Notes over Outlook is that while every PC that runs Outlook must also purchase a Windows license, Notes also runs on Linux. Per-seat licensing for commercial Linux distributions is typically lower than that of Windows, and community-maintained Linux distributions can be downloaded and installed for free. IBM is hoping that the low total cost of a PC running Notes on Linux will make such systems attractive to cost-conscious customers in emerging markets. To further up the ante, IBM announced on Tuesday that it has forged partnerships with major hardware and Linux vendors to ensure that installing IBM business software on Linux systems is as painless as possible. Soon, Linux users will be able to obtain versions of IBM's Lotus Foundations software that have been specially packaged for installation on Novell Suse, Red Hat, or Ubuntu Linux. Lotus Foundations is a software bundle that includes not just Notes, but also the Sametime enterprise instant messaging system and Symphony, IBM's competitor to the Microsoft Office productivity suite. By prepackaging it for the top three desktop Linux distributions, IBM stands to make Foundations a one-click install for the majority of business Linux customers. This is certainly encouraging news for anyone who is seeking an alternative to the Microsoft-dominated business software market, particularly in emerging markets such as Asia. Whether any of this momentum will translate into increased sales for IBM's software over Microsoft's in the U.S., however, remains to be seen. What do you think? Are you itching to break Microsoft's grip on your business? Will easier access to IBM's alternative software make you more likely to switch to the Lotus platform, or are you more interested in Web-based software such as Google Apps? Or, on the other hand, do you feel that there simply isn't any genuine competition for Microsoft's business software? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums। Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149467/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news
Is R&D in the U.S. losing focus, or just shifting focus? Pundits in recent years have taken to bemoaning a retreat by U.S. industry from basic research in science and technology. And indeed, it's easy to cite research labs whose glory days have come and gone -- Bell Laboratories comes to mind. But consider this: IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard together spend $17 billion annually on research and development. That's right, $17 billion. While many of those dollars are directed at product development, hundreds of millions are flowing into areas like computational biology, nanotechnology and advanced mathematics that may take years to bear fruit, if ever. It's significant that each of these companies has undergone substantial changes in its research labs recently: In July 2007, IBM named a new research director and announced plans to invest more than $100 million in each of four long-term exploratory research projects. A month later, HP also brought in a new research director and shortly after that launched a new strategy based on five mega-areas of IT research. Then, earlier this year, Microsoft Research, which adds 50 computer science Ph.D.s to its ranks every year, announced that it would greatly expand its research campus in Beijing and open a new lab in Cambridge, Mass. While the three companies have strikingly different research agendas, they have one important thing in common. All three are increasingly reaching outside of lab walls to collaborate in research with other companies, universities and customers. With that outreach comes a new openness that can speed the flow of ideas into the marketplace, according to Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. A Short History of R&D "R&D is basically seeking out new knowledge, and the question is, where are the good ideas?" Chesbrough says. "After World War II, the good ideas were loaded up in a small number of large companies -- Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox PARC, GE and so on. These were islands of towering knowledge in a relative desert." At the time, he says, universities generally disdained working with companies and instead relied on a federal government that was eager to fund research that might help win the Cold War. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and much of the federal largess dried up, Chesbrough continues. With its antitrust actions, the government turned its attention to reining in technology giants like AT&T and IBM. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley was born, and so was the Internet. "The result was product markets got more competitive, and those big companies couldn't sustain the long-term investments in research that they could in the earlier period," he says -- their money went instead to competing in their markets in the short term. Into this research breach stepped smaller, newer technology companies, universities, companies in Europe and Asia, and in some cases, even customers. To Chesbrough, that's all good news. "Today, no one has locked up the really good ideas, and the R&D processes of large companies have to connect to these parties and make use of them," he says. In fact, HP, IBM and Microsoft are all currently showing a strong move toward a favorite research concept of Chesbrough, " open innovation." As Chesbrough spells out in his book of the same title, open innovation calls for good ideas to come from both inside and outside the company. In turn, companies take the fruits of those ideas to market through internal as well as external paths. What follows is an overview of how three of the biggest names in research are putting open innovation and other concepts into practice in a changing R&D landscape। HP Labs: Five Big BetsHewlett-Packard Co. last year hired Prith Banerjee, the engineering dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as the new director of HP Labs, overseeing 600 researchers in seven labs around the world. The company followed up with an announcement the following March that HP Labs would shift focus from a large number of smaller projects to a few "big bet" projects in five major research areas -- information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability. "These are the big research challenges that we think are most important to our customers in the next decade," Banerjee says. Individual projects include exascale computing, social computing, quantum computing and so-called green computing. Explains Banerjee, "We had taken the approach of letting 1,000 flowers bloom and hoping a few would pan out. [But] we were working on a large number of projects without enough resources on each one. We'd have two or three people on a project, but now we'll have 20 to 30 large projects, each with 10 to 20 researchers working in teams." As a consequence of this change, he says, product divisions at HP will get research prototypes from HP Labs that are more fully developed, enabling products to be brought to market faster and at lower cost. Some observers of the new strategy at HP Labs -- including competitor IBM -- suggested it was yet another retreat from long-term basic research in favor of short-term, product-oriented work. But Banerjee insists the opposite is true. In the past, he says, less than 10% of HP Labs' budget went to exploratory, or "blue sky," research. Under the new plan, he says, one third of spending will be on "exploratory research," one-third on "applied research," and one-third on "advanced product development." A major thrust of HP's new strategy is increased collaboration with other companies, universities and venture capitalists. Toward that end, the company recently set up the HP IdeaLab Web site, which offers would-be partners sneak previews of research prototypes. And in May, HP released a global request for proposals to universities seeking collaboration in each of the five major research areas. Banerjee says he's seeking real partnerships in these areas, not ad hoc, one-off joint projects such as HP might have done in the past. "Never in the past have we gone to the outside world with so much detail about what we are working on," he says. To be sure, behind all the love of open innovation is bottom-line business sense. Such a strategy not only allows HP to cull ideas from a wider pool, it also allows the company to mitigate risk and share research costs. Clearly, Banerjee has revenue in mind when he says, "Our approach gives us a sharper focus in the areas that we believe will help our customers addresses the challenges they will face in the next decade. It also ... speeds the time it takes to quickly turn breakthrough research into real products and services." Either way, the change at the top of HP Labs says a lot about where the company is headed, Chesbrough says. "It's interesting that a company the size of HP would bring in, not a career engineer or scientist from the company, but an academic," he notes. "Instead of the go-it-alone attitude, I see this as evidence of a much more collaborative, distributed process. And that's a very good thing." IBM: "Collaboratories" and MoreThe buildings that house IBM's Thomas J. Watson and Almaden Research Centers are emblematic of an earlier time and an earlier attitude toward research. "The places are built high on a hill far away from everything else," Chesbrough observes. "They are almost physically designed to keep ideas from leaking out. If you look at the newer ones -- like Microsoft, Google or even Intel -- they are constructed to get ideas to flow in rather than to keep them out." Buildings notwithstanding, research is a new ball game at IBM, Chesbrough says. "IBM is an old dog that has learned some wonderful new tricks and is having great success doing it." While IBM remains strong in basic research in materials, semiconductors and the like, it has turned its R&D efforts more and more toward services and support technologies, he says. And a decision to support non-IBM products in its Global Services unit has "pushed IBM Research into the open standards domain -- Linux, Java, blade servers and other things," he says. Shortly after John Kelly's ascendency to the top of IBM Research last summer, he announced that IBM would spend more than $100 million over three years on each of four "high-risk" basic research areas: Nanotechnology Cloud computing and Internet-scale data centers Integrated systems and chip architecture Managing business integrity through advanced math and computer science Kelly promised to fund another 15 research topics at $30 million to $50 million each, and many more at lesser levels. He said IBM would increase collaboration with universities, government agencies and other companies, citing the success of earlier alliances with universities in nanotechnology and semiconductors. He also mentioned speech technology as an area in which IBM would collaborate more. Part of IBM's new game plan is the establishment of "collaboratories," mostly small, regional joint ventures with universities, foreign governments or commercial partners designed to tap into local skills, funding and sales channels in order to get new technology quickly into the marketplace. For example, in February, IBM announced it would form a nanotechnology collaboratory with Saudi Arabia to develop and market water desalination, solar energy and petrochemical applications. Mark Dean, an IBM Fellow and a vice president at IBM Research, hails the payoff from distributed collaborative research, but he says it has its challenges. "When you have people everywhere, you need technology to make people feel they are together, like there is some camaraderie," he says. "You need a sense of family on a project. This is an area that has to be worked on." IBM is adding "big bet" projects in exploratory research, Dean says. "For example, how does DNA interact with carbon nanotubes for self-assembly of circuits?" he says. "[There is] also spintronics and real-time analysis of large amounts of data from sensors all coming at you at one time. These are things nobody has done before." IBM is also increasingly collaborating with customers, Dean says। For example, it is working with "a prominent candy company" to apply a prototype Web analysis tool, called Business Insights Workbench (BIW), to find hidden patterns and meanings in structured and -- most important -- unstructured data. "The company wants to do business in some emerging markets," Dean explains, "and [BIW] will look at trends and biases within a culture to predict whether a particular brand of chocolate will be bought." Another big plus: The client company will be able to analyze Web-based information in any language without translation, Dean explains. Microsoft Research: The University ModelWhile companies such as HP rely on partnerships with universities to gain access to many basic technologies, Microsoft Corp. is trying to create its own university, Chesbrough says. Indeed, Microsoft Research can reasonably claim to have already done so. It has been led from its beginning in 1991 by Richard Rashid, a former professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Rashid makes no secret of his operating model for Microsoft Research: "The work we do is not that different from what you'd find at Stanford or Berkeley or [Carnegie Mellon University] in the sense that it is publishable basic research that is peer-reviewed." Rashid adheres to an outlook that sets Microsoft Research apart from many IT companies where every research project has a product line in mind: "Our research may have a short-term impact on the product groups, but that's not why we do the work -- it's a consequence of the work." For example, Rashid says, he started a small research group in computer vision -- machines that can see -- in the mid-1990s when no Microsoft product at the time seemed to need that kind of technology. "But in a few years, digital imaging and photography became a huge value to other parts of the company in areas like photo processing, image analysis and signal processing, and things like Windows Media and audiovisual codecs came out of that earlier work," he says. "And now things like Microsoft Surface are all based on computer vision technology. In fact, you could have read about the work leading up to Surface five years ago." Because Rashid's philosophy is to first do good computer science, and then see where it might fit, he focuses first on people. "My biggest lever is who I hire and who I fire; it's not telling people what to do," he says. Asked why he decided to launch a new lab in Cambridge, Mass., that will work at the intersection of traditional computer science and the social sciences, he says, "You don't establish a lab without the right person to do it. We had a great researcher, Jennifer Chayes, and she was really excited about a lab in that area [of the country]. She's fabulous and has done incredible work. If it wasn't for her energy and initiative, it probably wouldn't have happened." To be sure, many of the 272 research projects named at Microsoft Research's Web site are structured with major product lines like Windows, Office or Xbox in mind. But many seem to have no likely application in anything the company sells today."We are growing outward into areas where computer science intersects with other disciplines, like AIDS research, computational biology, astronomy, earth sciences and the environment," Rashid says. "We are increasingly engaged where computer science is making a big difference in the way other sciences are done." Asked about the trend toward outreach and collaboration, Rashid reels off a long list of global partnerships, many of them formed in the just the past two years: a joint lab with INRIA, the French national institute for research in computer science and control; a partnership with the University of Trent Center for Systems and Computational Biology in Italy; a partnership with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain that focuses on parallel distributed processing; the Microsoft-Intel Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Microsoft-sponsored Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon; the partnership with Georgia Institute of technology at the Institute for Personal Robots in Education; the partnership with universities in the Latin American Collaborative Research Federation; and the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summits। Universities Shift Focus, Too
Those kinds of partnerships, at Microsoft Research and elsewhere, have been spurred in part by a shift in thinking on university campuses, where working with corporations was once viewed as somehow crass and unworthy. "The model you'll see going forward," Chesbrough says, "is for universities and their leaders to become much more skilled and comfortable working with companies, and it will be much deeper partnerships." For example, HP is working with the Real-Time Computing Laboratory at the University of Michigan to develop algorithms for the dynamic allocation of resources -- such as CPU cycles, memory and bandwidth -- across applications in virtual environments in order to meet specified service level objectives. Kang Shin, a computer science professor and the founding director of the lab, says the university is well suited to provide the theoretical and mathematical underpinnings for the algorithms, but it lacks the real-world experience and the huge testbed -- up to 50,000 servers in a data center -- that HP brings. "We work side by side with HP, and we write papers together," Shin explains. "We work together so that we define real problems, not nonproblems. I think that's more important than the money we get from HP." Despite all the advantages, there are some downsides to open innovation, Chesbrough acknowledges. "A software company from the early 1990s called Go Corp. lost its pen-based computing operating system intellectual property and market position by sharing too much with Microsoft," he recalls. "However, most companies I have encountered are, if anything, overly aware of these risks and use these risks to excuse themselves from opening up their innovation process." To Chesbrough's mind, that's a mistake। "The many successful stories of companies adopting open innovation show that you can be more open without giving everything away." Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148170/the_new_face_of_randd_at_ibm_hp_and_microsoft.html
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