The security giant aims to be a player in the latest hot growth area, thin client computing.

Symantec today announced that it is buying nSuite, a privately-held virtual workspace management company, in a move some analysts see as a bid to ensure its future. The acquisition, scheduled to close later this month is for an undisclosed amount in cash.

As Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) moves into the antivirus and security market with its recently announced Equipt software as a service (SaaS) (define) offering, Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) has shifted gears toward a new endpoint strategy.

The purchase of nSuite is the third in a series of purchases around endpoint virtualization. It follows the acquisition of Altiris and Appstream earlier this year.

All three will form the nexus of Symantec’s newly established Endpoint Virtualization group, whose charter is “to look at virtualization technologies that can run on the laptop or anything that looks like a Windows desktop,” Brad Rowland, Symantec’s director of enterprise marketing, endpoint virtualization, told InternetNews.com.

The new emphasis on endpoint virtualization at Symantec “almost looks like a Plan B,” Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

Symantec’s move into endpoint virtualization “gives them increasing breadth so, if the antivirus stuff goes south, they’ll have a space in virtualization, which appears to be the next big thing” Enderle said.

Microsoft is treading hard and heavy on Symantec’s heels with the Equipt program, which consists of applications and security in software as a service (SaaS) mode. Equipt, available only in Circuit City stores, includes antivirus and antispyware software in Windows Live OneCare; Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 applications; and Microsoft Office Live workspace, which gives users a dedicated online workspace to share documents.

The nSuite connection broker and presentation virtualization technologies will let users access data and applications stored on servers at any time, from any device. This is the thin client model that’s been around for years and is experiencing a resurgence as virtualization takes hold, observers say.

Symantec’s goal is to enable anytime, anywhere computing through virtualization. “As a user I don’t have to know or care where the applications are coming from, I just want to compute,” Rowland said.

Yes, we need change

“Applications should follow users, instead of being tied to the desktops or user devices,” Rowland said. “Where I’m connecting, how secure I am, what function I’m trying to perform — these should all be governed by policies,” he added.

CIOs “should be able to take any computing building blocks and use them without having to use a vendor-specific toolset for the most critical pieces, which are application delivery and information management,” Rowland said. Eventually, underlying technologies such as hypervisors will become commoditized and different vendors’ hypervisors will coexist, Rowland added.

Symantec’s vision of anywhere, anytime computing is shared by Google, (NASDAQ: GOOG) with Google Apps; Microsoft, with Equipt; VMware (NYSE: VMW); Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), which unveiled three new thin clients in February; and IBM (NYSE: IBM), which “got rid of its PC division in anticipation of this,” Enderle said. “There’s likely to be a huge position in this direction and Symantec’s positioning itself to take advantage of it,” he added.

After the deal closes, Symantec will continue to sell the nSuite products in their current form. It will announce product updates at ManageFusion, a hands-on lab and training event held in various cities worldwide.

ManageFusion 2008 will be held in October. The event was co-founded by Altiris, now part of Symantec.

While nSuite focused on healthcare, and Symantec will continue selling to that space, it will also target other selected vertical markets. “We’ll deliver the applications based on the user,” Rowland said.

Will Symantec succeed with its move into the thin-client market? Quite likely, Enderle thinks. “You have a bunch of major players in this space, and Symantec’s moving in validates the market,” Enderle said.from internetnews.com

Free College Kit Online Degrees

Choose a career and we will help you find the school and program that will put you on the road to success. Do you need money for college? Find the school that is right for you and put you on your way to success. There are more career, education and training options than ever. Choose a career and we will help you find the school and program that will put you on the road to success. The 2008 FREE Education Guide includes: Ability to search 1,900 colleges and universities instantly. The Free Government Grant and Scholarship Guide. A Free Online degree information kit. Your gateway to a higher paying career.

Find a college for your continuing education

Get your degree with us.
Database of online colleges available to you.
Do you need to go to school.
College could change your life.
A degree could double your income & wealth.
Search for the perfect online college today!
Get a degree, make more money!
College and financial aid information at FreeCollegeKit.com
Search for the perfect online college today!
Get a degree, make more money!
College and financial aid information at FreeCollegeKit.com
Find a college for your continuing education

Sony Corporation announced the signing of a global partnership program contract with FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association).The contract will run from 2007 to 2014 with a contract value (excluding product leases) of US$305 million (approximately ¥33.0 billion*).

Through this program Sony will be able to exercise various rights as an official sponsor of over 40 FIFA events. These include the world’s greatest football event the FIFA World Cup™** (due to be held in South Africa in 2010 and South America in 2014)*** as well as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the FIFA Confederations Cup and the FIFA Interactive World Cup.

As a FIFA Partner, Sony will energetically promote advertising and marketing activities at these events, utilizing the global strength of its group companies in electronics, entertainment, game etc.

The agreement signed with FIFA makes Sony a “FIFA Partner”, the highest level of sponsorship status which is accorded to only six companies. Only one FIFA Partner is chosen for a number of defined industry or business categories. Sony has been chosen for the “Digital Life” category which will be established in 2007. “Digital Life” covers a wide variety of business activities from entertainment to electronics and as a FIFA Partner in this category, Sony will be able to exercise certain exclusive rights.

Through this partnership contract, Sony has been given a broad array of rights at FIFA events. Sony will be able to use the partner logo at the FIFA World Cup™ and other FIFA events as well as having rights to the use of certain FIFA images and archive materials. Other rights will include advertising boards in stadiums, TV sponsor credits, on-screen IDs**** and preferential negotiation rights for TV Commercial spots.

As a FIFA Partner, Sony will mobilize its personnel, material and intellectual property resources and develop new marketing methods to create new value for customers. Sony also hopes to make a real contribution to the great sport of football around the world through this deep and long-lasting partnership with FIFA.

The key sectors of the Sony group (including electronics, movies, music and game) will be involved in our partnership with the word’s most popular sport – football. These activities will heighten awareness and respect for the Sony brand, and as we deliver dreams and new forms of enjoyment to customers, will enhance our overall corporate value.

* Based on exchange rate as of April 5th.
** FIFA World Cup™ is a registered trademark of FIFA
*** A decision has not been reached on the host nation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup™.
**** On-screen ID refers to a corporate logo that appears on the TV screen as a background to the score-line.

from www.sony.net

The latest Nokia 6212 Classic Cell Phone receives FCC approval for sale in USA. It is engineered to work on WCDMA (850, 2100), GSM (850, 900, 1800) and 1900 networks. A 2.0-megapixel camera lets you capture images or record video clips. It supports WAP 2.0 protocols. Supporting a microSD card up to 4 GB, it lets the users save ringing tones, themes, tones, images, and video clips. Yes, it has all the common features found in Nokia models. What sets it apart is its support for Nokia XpressPrint to print images in JPG format. Nokia 6212 Classic Cell Phone can be connected to a compatible printer via CA-101 USB data cable or Bluetooth connectivity. The price and availability are a mystery yet.

from mobilewhack.com

Remember that duo of radio cell phones we got you news of in January? It looks like one of those two is ready for a release today, the R306 clamshell. The R306 has a slick design combined with many radio-centric features that can make anybody forget the music players on their devices. Dedicated stereo loudspeakers and preset channel buttons might be standard on other musicphones, but Sony Ericsson has added volume boost, 3D sound, radio alarm, TrackID (which can identify music), and FM recording to the mix with a 1.3 megapixel camera for casual photog needs. Available starting today in Coffee Black and Champagne White at an undisclosed price.

from mobilewhack.com 

Morgan Freeman is in the hospital due to a car accident in Mississippi. The hospital reports that his condition is serious although emergency technicians said the 71 year old Oscar winning actor was lucid during the rescue. The rescue included jaws to extract him from the vehicle.

My prayers and wishes are for you to recover quickly and completely Morgan. God bless.

from screenhead.com

British soldiers forced a Shia militia commander to listen to pornographic videos, deprived him of sleep, repeatedly beat him, and kept him in solitary confinement for more than five months, according to fresh damning allegations against the conduct of UK troops in Basra.

A detailed account of the latest claims of unlawful treatment by British soldiers are contained in a 20-page witness statement, seen by the Guardian, of Ahmed Jawad al-Fartoosi, a leader of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi army. The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that the military police were investigating the allegations. Fartoosi was detained for more than two years, including nearly six months in solitary confinement. He was arrested in his Basra home in September 2005 and released late last year after British forces agreed to an Iraqi-sponsored deal with the militia.

He says he was beaten with rifle butts and blindfolded before he was put in a tank. For 12 hours he and his fellow detainees given no food and were prevented from going to the toilet.

He says he was taken to the British base at Shaibah, on the outskirts of Basra, where he spent 72 days in solitary confinement in a small cell with no ventilation, though he says he was provided with three cooked meals a day. On the third or fourth night, he says, soldiers brought a laptop and placed it on a window sill just outside his cell.

“After a short period of conversation in English it became clear to me that the DVD was showing porn. It was playing at the loudest possible volume. Thereafter for the next month the porn movies were played all night.” He says soldiers left porn magazines for him to see by the sinks and toilets. “It was very humiliating for me to be treated in this way by the British army. If they expected me to give in to my basic instincts they did not realise that I am not that kind of man … I was determined not be sexually aroused by this but it made me physically sick.”

Fartoosi says he was deprived of sleep. When he was taken to be interrogated, he says, a blanket was thrown over his head. He adds: “I was spun about for between 15-30 minutes to disorientate me.”

In April 2007 Fartoosi was driven to Basra airport, now the only British base in Basra. He says he was accused of killing a member of Basra council. He was repeatedly told he was being detained because he was “leader of the Mahdi army”, and that the evidence against him was secret.

He was eventually released, as a result of papers signed by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, he learned later. Now living in Lebanon, according to his lawyers, Fartoosi identifies a number of British soldiers, including a senior officer, in his witness statement.

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, has written to Des Browne, the defence secretary, saying Fartoosi is entitled to substantial damages for false imprisonment and human rights violations.

Shiner said yesterday: “The use of sensory bombardment and, in particular, the pornographic films to attempt to break down this male Muslim shows that the UK were doing exactly the same as the US, using coercive interrogation techniques developed in the 1960s and especially in Northern Ireland, and then refined to fit the so-called ‘war on terror’.”

The MoD said in a statement: “Mr Al-Fartoosi, who was a senior commander in the Jaish al-Mahdi militia in Basra, was interned for the protection of UK forces and Iraqi nationals. We are not aware of any allegations of abuse being made by him during his internment. Claims are now being investigated by the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.”

from www.guardian.co.uk

“In an update to the little green men story of not-life-on-Mars, NASA has twittered: ‘The buzz this weekend was due to an interesting soil chemistry finding, still preliminary, but now avail here:’ where ‘here’ is NASA Spacecraft Analyzing Martian Soil Data. The exciting bit: ‘Within the last month, two samples have been analyzed by the Wet Chemistry Lab of the spacecraft’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suggesting one of the soil constituents may be perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance.’ Also, ‘NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss these recent science activities.’”

TOKYO - 01 Aug 2008: Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) will unveil its ninth cloud computing center worldwide in Tokyo, Japan. The center will give large enterprise customers, universities and governments immediate access to the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications, and deliver new and innovative services to their customers.

In established markets like Japan, organizations have extensive, mature technology infrastructures that in many cases have become complex and inflexible over years of adding and subtracting pieces. New applications of technology, such as mobile commerce, broadband over power lines, Web 2.0 applications and self-publishing, and real-time data streams, are stretching the capacity of these systems to their limits. The world’s information infrastructure was not meant to handle this kind of computing — especially in mature markets.

“We consider cloud computing to be the model that can change the current IT market structure fundamentally, and create paradigm shifts,” said Yutaka Miyabe, Director of System Research and Development Center, NS Solutions Corporation. “To spread cloud computing in Japan, it is very meaningful that IBM has launched the first cloud computing center in Japan at this time. NS Solutions Research Center will actively use this center and advocate cloud computing.”

Cloud computing gives organizations the opportunity to remotely access a vast network of computers that can be tapped on-demand to deliver the kinds of services that consumers today — and tomorrow — will insist upon. For example, as broadband Internet and mobile phone networks continue to take the place of the personal computer, traditional telecom companies are forced to offer new kinds of services to billions of users at once. In the future your mobile device will be expected to integrate disparate sources of data and communicate with other devices, knowing not only what kind of music you like, but also where you are right now, if the band you like is in town, buy you a ticket to the show and get you in the door with a digital barcode. Clearly, this requires an immense amount of computing power.

“Cloud computing is fundamentally about re-engineering the world’s computing infrastructure, to enable game-changing — even life changing — applications,” said Willy Chiu, Vice President, IBM High Performance On Demand Solutions. “To IBM, cloud computing is much more than the normal evolution of a data center.”

IBM has dedicated more than 200 full-time researchers and over 100 million dollars over three years in cloud computing, and offers a number of products and services to help clients offer the types of services end users and consumers demand. Built on IBM’s expertise in leading massive-scale computing initiatives, Blue Cloud is a set of hardware, software and services that allows IBM clients to offer personal and business services from remote, centralized servers, the “cloud,” that share computing resources and bandwidth — to any device, anywhere.

“To develop high skilled human resources in IT field, it is necessary to create latest IT environment in education place,” said Hiroto Yasuura, Dean of Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University. “Kyushu University is very interested in cloud computing technology, which can provide an on-demand IT environment to our students and teachers. We have been working with IBM, the pioneer of this field. Kyushu University will continue to take advantage of cloud computing technology more actively.”

The IBM Cloud Computing Center at Japan is yet another example of IBM’s rapidly expanding capabilities in cloud computing. IBM launched Europe’s first Cloud Computing Center in Dublin, Ireland in March and two more centers in Beijing, China and Johannesburg, South Africa in June. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as Wuxi City of China, Sogeti, the Local Professional Services Division of Capgemini, the Vietnamese government institutions and universities, and iTricity, a utility-based hosting service provider headquartered in the Netherlands.

To learn more about IBM’s cloud computing initiative, please visit www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/hipods

USB Miniature Vacuum

USB Wholesale

More Information