Lilia Guan

Anthology Solutions has expanded operations into the Asia Pacific Region.

Anthology Solutions has also appointed Ex-AMD country manager, John Robinson as its Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand.

The US based provider of integrated storage solutions for small businesses and consumers will open an office in Sydney to support business activates and bolster relationships with existing distributors of its Yellow Machine Terabyte Storage Appliance.

“The Australian and Pacific markets are an important step in bringing the affordable and compact innovations in storage, such as in the Yellow Machine Terabyte Storage Appliance, to a global market,” said Stephen Dix, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Anthology Solutions. “After successfully launching the Yellow Machine Terabyte Storage Appliance in North America, we are eager to broaden this accomplishment worldwide with a stellar base of partners and distributors. We are confident that John will help the company achieve great success in our global efforts.”

As country manager for Anthology Solutions, Robinson will lead sales and marketing efforts in Australia and New Zealand. Robinson is a seasoned technology marketing executive, with more than thirty years of experience with leading IT organisations, marketing semiconductors and microelectronics to channel partners and retailers.

Previously, Robinson served as country manager of Australia and New Zealand for Advanced Micro Devices’ Computational Products and Memory groups for four years, and held senior executive roles at IBM and Texas Instruments.

“The Australia/New Zealand market is one of the fastest markets adopting new storage technologies,” said Robinson. “We are bringing the Yellow Machine Terabyte Storage Appliance technology to the region, using a broader partner and distributor base to market to the IT and consumer communities.”

A recent article posted by financial weekly newspaper Barrons stated Dell’s best days were behind them. However analysts feel this is little premature.

Industry leaders are being rounded up by leading communications forum to give advice on convergence issues.

The Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) has gathered experts from some of the industry’s leading bodies to consider the issues posed by the converged regulatory and technical environment.
The new ACIF Convergence Group will advise on the best way to tackle issues relating to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Next Generation Networks (NGN) , content and other associated areas.
The emphasis of the Convergence Group will be on developing outcomes tailored to the specific issues and could involve the production of fact sheets, holding of forums, development of codes or standards etc.
As well as the traditional telecommunications sector, there are representatives from broadcasting, content providers, internet service providers, regulators and consumer organisations.
According to ACIF’s chief executive officer, Anne Hurley, who chairs the new group, the convergence of multiple technologies was blurring the boundaries of the various regulatory regimes and creating new challenges which the industry needed to address.
“We are certainly entering an era of dynamic flux which will require some new  and imaginative responses from a regulatory perspective,” Hurley said. “This is the type of situation where the self-regulatory model is at its best because we believe that the best outcomes for all stakeholders can be achieved by co-operation.
“The ACIF Convergence Group will offer the opportunity for a broad cross-section of interested parties to sit down together and come up with some practical solutions without the need for government intervention.”

Creative Labs Pty Ltd, a local subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd has released the Creative Headphone HN-700.

“These make great travelling headphones”, said Nick Angelucci, Marketing Manager from Creative in Australia. “With the active noise cancellation, I can enjoy my music in pretty much any environment – great for that airline buzz when flying or the clatter on the train when travelling to work; even at home with distant dog barks or birds chirping out the window, you can enjoy your music without much interruption.”

The Creative Headphone HN-700 is ergonomically designed with leatherette-cushioned ear-pads for comfortable listening and can be folded with detachable side cable for neat and easy packing. Also included is a travel carry pouch and 3.5mm dual plug for airline sound system use.

Creative Headphones HN-700 is priced at AU$99.95 inc GST.

McDATA a provider of storage networking solutions has announced the appointment of IDS-G as its national Australian distributor.

The decision is designed to increase market penetration for McDATA’s products and services in the Australian and New Zealand marketplace. The storage company traditionally sold products through a vendor/reseller market, through big name companies like IBM and EMC. This, according to Ken Cooper, country manager for Australia and New Zealand, McData is still a critical part of the company’s strategy. 

“Since our acquisition of CNT of July we want to showcase our total range of products. It will allow us to covers broader spectrum of the total storage market with a complete storage networking solution. Having a dedicated distributor also affords us the opportunity to increase traction, focus and support both at the reseller level and directly to the end user. This partnership will complete our go-to market strategy and complement our partner strategy. Our partners are still integral to our business, we’ve even appointed Brendan O’Reilly to the position of channel manager for Australia and New Zealand,” said Cooper.

For IDS-G, McDATA complements its existing portfolio, which encompasses solution in the data management and data storage field. According to Les Dunn, sales director for IDS-G the opportunity with McData will allow IDS-G to capitilise on the significant opportunity that exists within the small and medium-sized enterprise.

“We can better address the SME market than major vendors like IBM. All the major vendors are struggling over market share with each other at the top-end. While the SME part of the market place is exploding at a very quick rate,” he said. “We will be launching a series of sales and marketing promotions aimed at the SME market. These promotions will aim to heighten market growth and encourage resellers to further complement their current market offerings with the additional range of products now available form McDATA.” 

The price for McDATA products start from $4000 to half a million, Dunn believes the entry level is reasonable compared to a couple of years ago.

“The increase in importance of data has actually reduced the cost data storage products, so it’s more affordable for the SME sector. A couple of years ago if you had asked me the same question I would have said entry level products start at $8000. It’s all to do with equation; businesses are weighing the value of the company’s data to the risk of losing that data. When I was working at HD 2 years ago a terabyte of storage would’ve cost $100K, now you can get a disk for $30K.”

A report shows the revenue derived from annual networking hardware shipments and from equipment that incorporates a home networking connection will increase significantly.

The report by research company, In-Stat, shows revenue will increase from US$9 billion in 2004 to over US$21 billion in 2009. What’s driving this is the push for higher speeds, lower prices and increasing network areas in the home is driving the market, the high-tech market research market firm says. However, In-stat believes the ‘highly-touted’ use of storage and streaming of multimedia files may take years to catch on with the mass consumer. The report Digital Domicile 2005: Wireless Overtakes Ethernet is focused on the US market; however there are no Australian statistics of this kind for the market in this country. Although In-Stat did find the installed base of home networks worldwide went from 24 million in 2003 to 37 million in 2004, a jump of 13 billion.
“Our research shows that there is growing interest among US consumers to use home networks to connect their increasing library of digital entertainment audio and video files with their traditional entertainment equipment,” says Joyce Putscher, In-Stat analyst. “As consumers become more comfortable and familiar with the idea of bridging their PCs with their traditional analog equipment, interest will pick up.”
The report also found WLAN has now surpassed Ethernet as the desired home network choice, and is now dominated by multi-band. Home networking equipment continues to drop in price and increasing functionality such as wireless and VoIP is being integrated. Silicon prices, higher volumes and competition have all contributed toward aggressive pricing.

Mobile phone company Nokia has delayed the launch of its N91 music phone until the first quarter of 2006.

Nokia had originally planned to get the N91 onto the market during the last quarter of this year, in time for the Christmas and end-of-year holiday seasons. However the company said it wanted to ensure that the phone, holding thousands of songs, would work on the widest range of music platforms and be a true “jukebox” mobile phone.

Reuters quoted Jonas Geust, vice president of music in Nokia’s Multimedia division, “what we basically decided is that we will postpone it a few weeks, push it out to Q1 and do this Microsoft DRM implementation solidly. That’s how we want to ensure that we get a great user experience already from launch.”

Nokia said it wanted consumers to be free to choose how to get their music — from CDs copied to a PC, directly from Internet stores, or from their mobile network operator — and be able to harmonize their collections at the click of a button. That would mean they are not locked into a single channel, such as Apple’s iTunes.

The N91 multimedia phone’s 4-gigabyte hard drive stores up to 3,000 songs, using advanced coding systems to minimize space needed. The phone will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks.

Geust declined to give Nokia’s sales expectations or say which telecoms firms were keen to offer the N91 to their subscribers.

“What we can say is there is great interest from the big, big operators and we are actively working on integrating their preferred music services onto the devices,” he said.

Hewlett-Packard has launched a selection of small business server bundle designed to make access and operation of a small business server simpler and more affordable.

The HP ProLiant ML110, ML150 and ML350 servers will all be available with pre-installed copies of Microsoft Small Business Server. The ML110 includes an Intel Pentium 4 Processor 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 2 x Hot Plug 80 GB SATA and 6 port SATA Raid controller and is priced at $1699, including 1 year standard warranty. Priced at $4175, the ProLiant ML150 comes with Intel Xeon Processor 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 2 x 36 GB 15k Ultra320, HP DAT72 Tape, 10Pk single media, HP T7000UPS. HP’s ProLiant comes with Intel Xeon processor 3.2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 2 x 72 Ultra320 10k hard disk, Smart Array 641 controller patching and vulnerability software manager and is priced at $4995. 

Marshall Mitchell Corporate Consultants based out of Perth recently replaced its ageing server with an HP ProLiant ML350 including pre-installed with Microsoft Small Business Server. Its business manager, Rupert Cheong felt the server has helped to increase productivity.

“The time spent on client jobs has decreased by as much as 25 per cent. Because we now enjoy much higher level of system reliability, our maintenance expenditure has also been reduced by about $10,000 per annum,” he said.

NEC’s widescreen television is an alternative to Plasma or LCD.

NEC has released a product for people who aren’t ready for a Plasma or LCD television screen. The PF32WT-100 32 inch (80 cm) Digital, widescreen 16.9 colour television has1080i flat-widescreen colour television technology with an on-board digital tuner, 5-band graphic equalizer and Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder. It also features a 3-channel, 7 watt amplifier for front (left, centre and right) surround sound channels

The PF32WT100 utilises an advanced ‘Croma Vision’ Flat Screen Technology together with Digital Comb Filtering, to produce extremely accurate colour separation and the finest in picture detail quality.

Adding to picture quality is 100Hz Digital Scan technology that refreshes the screen 100 times per second and boasts HDTV 1080i compatibility, which will allow it to capture vibrant, high-resolution, picture perfect images from today’s digital transmissions.

NEC’s Product Manager – Home Entertainment, Paul Cunningham stated, “The NEC PF32WT100 represents current state-of-the-art Digital TV technology built upon trusted CRT innovation. Without doubt, for only $1499.00 and a nationwide 1-year parts and labour warranty, there is no better way to enjoy brilliant image quality from today’s digital broadcasts”.

The PF32WT100 offers a HD input connection, and includes Component Video, S-Video and Composite Video for the best realisation from DVD players, VCRs and other video sources. Other features include Teletext, On/Off Timer, and a convenient digital clock display. It also comes with an infra-red remote controller.