True love or farce?
Here we go again
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View → More by this authorPublished Wednesday 2nd May 2007 23:33 GMTWhere Dell 1.0 had Red Hat, Dell 2.0 sports Ubuntu. Can you really tell the difference?
Dell 1.0 had Michael Dell brag in 2000 about being “the first major manufacturer to offer Linux across its full product line.” Dell made these comments at the LinuxWorld conference, where he also promoted Dell investments in open source companies such as Eazel, Red Hat, TurboLinux, Linuxcare and CollabNet.
“Dell has prepared for wide-scale Linux adoption by investing more engineering resources to Linux than to any other operating system,” Dell said, at the time. “We’re doing this to make it easy for our customers to run Linux; configurations of all Dell products are now designed, tested and certified for Linux. Our factories can now customize each system – from PCs to servers – with Linux.”
Less than a year later, Dell quit selling Linux on PCs and laptops to consumers.
Where Michael Dell in 2000 said “the only thing growing faster than Linux is the number of Linux systems Dell is shipping,” a Dell spokeswoman in 2001 claimed that weak customer demand forced Dell to scrap its PC/notebook Linux business.
Now Dell reckons that customers again want Linux. So, it’s going to ship Ubuntu on a limited number of desktops and laptops. Dell has, in fact, made such computers available with FreeDOS for a long time, as a weird concession to Microsoft. Dell didn’t ship the Linux cancer, but it made it really easy for you to outfit a computer with Linux.
Apparently, you – the consumer – convinced Dell to go one step further with Ubuntu.
Dell set up a site called IdeaStorm to gather suggestions from consumers. The notion of pre-installed Linux was promoted 133,089 times on the site, making it the top suggestion. Pre-installing OpenOffice followed at 96,593, and installing Firefox followed at 72,153.
Wouldn’t you know it? Michael Dell claims on a Dell website to run his laptop with Ubuntu, OpenOffice and Firefox.
You’re told that this Ubuntu love is all part of Dell 2.0. The company is listening to its customers now.
One should, however, question just how authentic Dell 2.0 really is.
After all, Dell claimed that slow Linux desktop sales caused it to scrap the idea back in 2000.
Absorbing that line requires that you ignore Microsoft’s rather firm notes to Dell. Microsoft told OEMs to “meet demand but not help create demand” where Linux was concerned.
You’ll also recall that Dell said there was no customer demand for Opteron-based servers even though sales of Opteron chips skyrocketed, leaving Dell’s server business as flat as a Midland, Texas road. Did Dell listen harder to Intel or its customers? Not the hardest question to answer.
Exactly who is Dell’s master these days? Partners and margins or the customer?
This Ubuntu experiment should give us a clue. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk
— Posted by Jonathan
Sun turns a Q3 profit despite lackluster sales
Two in a row
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View → More by this authorPublished Tuesday 24th April 2007 20:33 GMTFind your perfect job – click here for thousands of tech vacancies Updated Sun Microsystems rode a slight increase in product sales to a profitable third quarter.
The server maker posted Q3 revenue of $3.28bn – a 3 per cent rise over the $3.18bn brought in during the same period last year.
That revenue total proved enough to hand Sun a $67m – 2 cents per share – profit, which compares favorably with a $217m – 6 cents per share – loss during the fiscal third quarter of 2006. The Q3 profit stands as Sun’s second experience in a row with black ink.
At first blush, investors spanked Sun’s shares down five per cent in after-hours trading to $5.67 per share, at the time of this report. They seemed to hope for better sales figures with analysts providing a consensus revenue estimate of $3.42bn.
Sun’s product revenue reached $2.06bn during the third quarter, as compared to $2.04bn in the same period last year. Services revenue came in at $1.22bn, which compares to $1.14bn.
While Sun’s revenue number looks okay, the meat behind it smells pretty ripe.
Sun’s 2006 turnaround story relied on rising server unit numbers, rising revenue and cost cutting. These days, however, rising server sales have vanished from that equation.
The company’s total server shipments dropped 9 per cent year-on-year – the first such decline since the second quarter of 2006. The only thing saving Sun’s server business during the quarter were strong high-end Unix system sales, which boosted revenue but did little for the unit count.
Sun’s x86 business has slowed way down, growing just 12 per cent. About six months ago, Sun’s x86 business still boomed on the back of 50 per cent growth. No wonder the vendor signed up Intel as a supplier.
The company also used to brag about its UltraSPARC T1-based server line. Not so much anymore with the “Niagara” revenue staying flat at just over $100m per quarter.
And you can always count on Sun’s storage business for a sales decline – this quarter revenue dropped just .2 per cent. At least they’re consistent.
Sun’s well-groomed CEO Jonathan Schwartz blamed all revenue and shipment concerns on a bad March. This is know as the “Julius Caesar Gambit” in business school.
“We did face a difficult environment in the US and UK markets, especially in March,” he said.
Later, during a conference call with analysts, Schwartz added, “It seemed to be a lot of customers saying, ‘You know, I made the choice, but I am going to execute on the purchase orders in the next quarter.‘”
Sun hopes that a fresh blade chassis due out in June will revive unit shipments. The “Constellation” system will run Opteron-based, Xeon-based and SPARC-based blades. Sun has code-named the Xeon-based systems “Wolf.” With any luck, the servers will have far more bite than Sun’s previous blade boxes.
Schwartz also revealed that the Stanford Linear Accelerator has purchased one of Sun’s Project Blackbox white trash data centers in a shipping container.
Later this week, Sun plans to unveil its x4950 streaming switch, Schwartz said. The system, crafted by co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, will go after the video on demand market.
Lastly, Schwartz noted that subscriptions to Sun’s Java Enterprise System middleware stack have reached 1.5m – up a healthy 209,000 subscriptions during the quarter. Sun has been hammering away at the JES concept since early 2005 and only recently saw any growth to speak of from the software bundle, which can be purchased on a per employee basis.
Sun has recently decided against breaking out its software revenue numbers. ®
— Posted by Jonathan
Oracle shuts Windows on data integrity drive
Multivendor data checking spec will be Linux-only
By Bryan Betts → More by this authorPublished Friday 20th April 2007 11:45 GMTFind your perfect job – click here for thousands of tech vacancies Oracle has slammed a window in Microsoft’s face, by ensuring that a new enterprise data integrity checking scheme for mission-critical applications will run only on Linux.
The database company has linked up with Emulex, LSI, and Seagate to standardise the way that their technologies check for data corruption.
The four companies have formed the Data Integrity Initiative, and say their work will use the DIF (data integrity field) spec developed by the ANSI T10 committee – DIF allows 8 bytes of “protection information” to be added to each logical SCSI block.
However, it will also be based upon work done in Oracle’s Hardware Assisted Resilient Data (HARD) programme, said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle’s Linux engineering veep. That makes the initial DII thrust Linux-only, with no schedule yet for Windows or Unix implementation.
“Our work to implement DII technology in the Linux kernel will allow applications and kernel subsystems to take advantage of these crucial data integrity features,” Coekaerts said.
Having a standard data checking mechanism allows data integrity to be verified all the way from the application through the storage network to the disk drive, the DII companies claimed. It will enable Emulex Fibre Channel SAN cards, LSI arrays, and Seagate hard disks to validate data by checking it against metadata created by the Oracle database.
“End-to-end data protection cannot be achieved by a single vendor, and therefore requires a multi-vendor initiative such as the DII,” said Phil Bullinger, a senior veep with LSI’s storage group.
DII will need new hardware as well as updated software, and the founding companies said that should begin arriving next year. As yet there are no SAN fabric suppliers involved, but the timescale presumably means there is still time for them to join up. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/20/data_integrity_init/
— Posted by Jonathan
Colour in the office has been available for nearly 10 years, both as Inkjet or Laser. Whereas the ‘specialist’ types of laser colour applications previously made laser colour printing solutions cost prohibitive, this market has seen rapid growth as the capabilities and usability features have advanced to allow easier access by casual operators.
The functionality of office colour machines is now on a par with the mono equivalent, the weaker specification being in the area of speed.
Price has also been a factor affecting growth. Now that ‘office’ colour machines offer good quality colour and features there have been significant price changes in capital costs and running costs. The price for mono (black) on a colour device is now at a similar level as mono from a mono machine, and the phrase ‘black to colour’ has been coined to describe the market movement towards colour capable devices that are increasingly replacing mono products.
Why Colour? Why not? – we all use colour, we all prefer colour, we will always respond to colour documents faster and more effectively, an important message for all businesses, and one that many businesses are embracing to their benefit. However, costs should always be front of mind. Surprisingly, Inkjet is a cost that has traditionally managed to slip through the net, with many organisations being unaware of the costs involved. Many articles exist on the very high price of ink and the very low capital costs of the printer, but many businesses are unaware of the volumes being printed and the amount of ink being purchased. This will probably be a surprise and shock to many companies.
Inkjet printing is excellent for one off, occasional print usage. However, the costs rise rapidly when the volumes increase, and the overall slow job productivity does represent a handicap.
Laser and LED technology offer the solution for higher volumes and in situations where job productivity is required. Many machines offer low running costs on higher capital machines, capable of much higher monthly volumes and document finishing capabilities like duplexing, sorting, stapling, hole punching and folding – all at very high speed when compared with inkjet and offering the ability to be shared by multiple user through a network. With this comes control and feedback, with many machines allowing control of access to the product through PIN numbers and count of prints/copies per person. Sharp also offer a secure Network Card that can stop unauthorised usage of the product.
Many Office Colour devices can print in mono at a similar speed to mid volume mono products running between 25-40 pages per minute. However, these types of devices only offer slow colour speeds at around 12 pages per minute. With the introduction of these devices, organisations have started to use colour much more cost-effectively. And in turn, this has prompted the demand for faster colour solutions.
As a result, new generation products have arrived, like those offered by Sharp which offers higher colour speeds – allowing businesses to run colour at a similar level of productivity as their mono machines.”
Market Backdrop
• Colour market has grown rapidly and will continue to grow because technology is now catching up with customer requirements.
• The user demand has been changing over the last few years due to increasing output volumes and recognition of the increasing costs of their current technology. It is easy to understand the importance of colour in the business environment. When colour output has changed the way a report, presentation or bulletin has been perceived by its recipient, the creator will continue to use colour to maintain that increased level of perception.
• With Inkjet, when the volumes increase, so does the print cost, business cost due to slow output speeds and lack of productivity features found on normal office products – duplex, multiple paper sources and stapling being the more obvious.
• Customer demand has pushed for conventional mono office copier and printer products to include colour in its range of features.
• Research from Infotrends/Cap Ventures in Aug 2004 shows us that the most frequently copied colour documents in order are Internet Pages, Presentations, Forms/Letterheads, and Marketing Materials.
• Infotrends/Cap Ventures also say that the “Universal Copier/Printer” will take copy and print volumes from Offset Presses/Digital Production (for convenience), and Workgroup/Personal printers (for productivity, lower running costs and finished output). Interestingly, 60% of respondents say that they will replace their Inkjet machines with “Universal Copier/Printers” (UCP is Cap Venture name for Colour Capable/Colour Centric products), 45% say replace Mono printer, 45% say Mono Copier (multiple responses to multi segments)
• The market has responded in 2 ways. Firstly Colour Capable devices which offer mono office products with slow colour speeds – offering all the mono benefits but designed for low colour volumes. Secondly Colour Centric, which offer all the benefits of Colour Capable products but thanks to Tandem Technology, produce Colour output at high speeds. Colour Centric products were originally at a higher capital cost than Colour Capable products, but the launch of the Sharp MX Series has put this Colour Centric technology on equal terms with Colour Capable – with huge speed and productivity advantages.
• IDC market research forecasting huge decline in Inkjet sales to 2008, 40% down on 2003. Colour MFP sales are forecast to increase by 150% over the same period. Sales of mono products will be slightly impacted, but in general Colour sales are incremental sales in the marketplace
Product Specifics
• MX Series are “3rd generation” machines, strengthening our current product range to appeal to a wider audience.
• Sharp offers the marketplace the MX-2300N at 23 pages per minute Full Colour with 23 ppm Mono to join the range along side the MX-2700N (27ppm Full Colour and 27 ppm Mono) and the MX-3501N at 35ppm Full Colour with 35ppm Mono to join with the MX-4501N (35ppm Full Colour with 45ppm Mono).
High Speed Mono and Colour Copying and Printing from one compact unit
Sharp UK have been providing the Office environment with quality devices for over 30 years, and are pleased to introduce the new MX Series compact multifunctional printers that offers many advantages to the user
Colour Copying and Printing in the office has seen a significant increase, the obvious presentation benefits being the driving force.
The MX-2300N and MX-2700N provide full A3 output and comes standard with a Document Feeder, 40 Gigabyte Hard Disk, Printer Controller, A3 Network Scanning (to distribute colour scanned images to desktop or by e-mail to other parties) and Secure Network Interface Card. The MX-3501N and MX-4501N offer similar functionality but with a Duplex Single Pass Document Feeder for rapid scanning, and an 80GB HDD
Optional additional equipment includes paper trays and the ability to send faxes from A3 or Book originals.
200 User Access Codes (1000 on MX-3501N/4501N) enable you to control costs by restricting usage of Colour, and the Secure Network Interface Card offers you Firewall capabilities at the machine level by restricting access at IP/MAC address level.
With the standard configuration, the MX Series provide a good IT investment for any office, allows you to take the facilities offered to staff and internal support to a new level, to share the capital investment over a controlled network and introduce lower colour and mono running costs to a cost conscious environment.
Important factors to consider
• Cost
The Capital Cost of the equipment must be considered with the ongoing Running Costs, and also with “what can the product do for me”. Consider the labour costs of manually collating your output or manually duplexing versus the Copier/Printer doing all the work. Also consider how long it takes to create a finished job on your older technology.
• Productivity
How fast?
How easy?
Copy/Print Collation?
Therefore Labour Costs?
• Presentation
Internal – is it important to convey the right message accurately and professionally to internal staff? External– is it important to convey the right message accurately and professionally to your prospects and existing customers. Ensure that you are perceived by your customers as providing professional services and quality output.
• Supplier Can supplier offer advise on usage and applications from your purchase to ensure that you maximise your investment effectively, bearing in mind that your market situation can change over the next few years?
Will your supplier ensure that your machine works regularly over the next 3 years or more or is it currently “a here today dotcom thank you very much for your business goodbye” company?
In Business, whatever your business, Colour is already used in onscreen presentation design, spreadsheets and presentations. Much of this work is already printed out, and it is important to identify where it is printed and on what – is it the most cost effective way in terms of running costs or productivity.
Why make life difficult?
We have designed our range of Colour product with ease of use foremost in our minds. We have used an operating system and User Interface similar to that developed over the last 3 years on mono products. End Users must feel comfortable with the products to ensure reductions in frustration and calls to your internal support.
— Posted by Jonathan
Panasonic has earned the No. 1 ranking in customer satisfaction among copier brands for 2006, according to the newly released satisfaction study conducted by J.D Power and Associates.
The results of the study are based on responses from over 1,500 business people and technical decision makers from SME’s and large businesses within a variety of industries. These results demonstrate Panasonic’s service excellence in providing the highest level of customer satisfaction within the industry.
http://www.panasonic.co.uk/news/satisfaction%20dec.html
— Posted by Jonathan
For all your copier, printer, fax machine and computer equipment needs you can contact us using the following details or simply complete our enquiry form on the right and we will contact you without any obligation to discuss your requirements.
SRS Copycom Limited
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Carnegie Campus,
Dunfermline,
FIFE.
KY11 8PY.
Tel: 01383 840800
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