PALO ALTO, Calif., May 27, 2008 – HP ProCurve experienced year-over-year port growth for the first calendar quarter of 2008 that nearly quadrupled the growth rate of the networking industry, according to data from a quarterly report by market research firm Dell’Oro Group.(1)

According to the analyst firm’s data, ProCurve, the world’s second largest enterprise LAN networking vendor, grew worldwide port shipments by 28.4 percent in the first calendar quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. The industry growth rate for this same period was 7.82 percent.

“In the face of a challenging global economy, ProCurve’s impressive growth is based on the ability to provide customers with choice to handle their most difficult deployments, from small offices to global enterprises,” said Mark Thompson, HP ProCurve global director of sales and marketing. “This growth reflects a dramatic increase in the number of customers who are reconsidering their alternatives and looking to ProCurve for flexibility to quickly meet the changing needs of users, applications and organizations.”

Comparing quarter-over-quarter regional port growth in total switched Layer 2 through Layer 7, ProCurve’s port shipments in Asia Pacific grew by 52.4 percent versus an Asian market that declined 5.1 percent. In North America, ProCurve shipments grew at 10.4 percent in a market that declined by 11.8 percent. ProCurve port shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew at 14.0 percent in a market that declined 1.0 percent.

In addition, according to Dell’Oro Group data ProCurve’s Power over Ethernet (PoE) worldwide shipments grew 68.4 percent year over year compared to market growth of 26.0 percent. This data sustains ProCurve in the No. 2 industry position in PoE.

In Layer 2 and Layer 3 total Gigabit port shipments, ProCurve quarter-over-quarter growth was 20.8 percent in a market that declined 2.0 percent. Dell’Oro Group data places ProCurve as the No. 2 overall Gigabit networking vendor.

In the Web managed Gigabit segment category, ProCurve grew at a 60.6 percent rate, in contrast with quarter over quarter industry growth of 12.7 percent, boosting ProCurve Small Business Networking switches to the No. 2 position in this segment with a 21.5 market share.

This is pretty cool and a little big brotherish as well. Network World originally posted this article a couple days ago, but it caught my eye and looks to be an interesting concept. Check it out and send us your thoughts.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

Web sites that automatically customize themselves for each visitor so they come across as more appealing or simply less annoying can boost sales for online businesses by close to 20%, MIT research says.

These sites adapt to display information so everyone who visits sees a version best suited to their preferred style of absorbing information, say the four researchers who write about such sites in "Website Morphing", a paper being published this month in Marketing Science .

So the site might play an audio file and present graphics to one visitor, but present the same information as text to the next depending on each person's cognitive style. Morphing sites deduce that style from the decisions visitors make as they click through pages on the site.

"You need five to 10 clicks before you can really get a pretty good idea of who they are," says John Hauser, the lead author of the paper and a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He says over the past decade statistics have evolved to allow broader conclusions from less data.

"You can infer a lot more from a lot less data by borrowing data from other respondents," he says. "When I first heard it I thought this couldn't possibly work."

But it does. By using a sample set of users navigating a test Web site, individual businesses can set the baseline for what click choices on that site mean about the visitor. Over time with real potential customers visiting a live site, the morphing engine fine tunes itself to draw better conclusions about visitors' preferences and to serve up what pages most likely lead to a sale, Hauser says.

The software is open source and available at MIT's Web site, but so far no one has created a commercial business to apply it to individual customers, he says.

Such auto-customizing Web sites are less intrusive than the alternative - sites that visitors can manually customize, a time-consuming process that many visitors won't bother with, the researchers say. And they create the right Web site for maximum sales much quicker, Hauser says.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Network World has posted an article about the ShoreTel 8 release that was reported here back in April. The article gives an overview of the new ShoreGear switches and Personal Call Manager software. You can find some of it below and the remainder here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

ShoreTel earlier this week announced several software and hardware upgrades and two new voice switches. Included in the announcement are enhancements to the ShoreWare Call Manager product line, more open interfaces for integration, and adds two new voice switches: the ShoreGear 24A and the ShoreGear 30.

The ShoreWare Personal Call Manager has been upgraded to provide more intuitive interfaces. Added features include an integrated client user interface with a main display for calling features and tabs for messages and history; simplified access to features designed to be easier to use and find; quick and easy dialing with exchange and phone directory along with just in time telephony presence; and a simplified, single-level user interface with personal and advanced merged options.

The ShoreWare Professional Call Manager has added improvements to its basic voice communications and it now provides automatic and on-demand video communications. The Instant Messaging interface upgrades include easy sidebar conversations; on the phone communications; and interfaces for a third party presence server. The unified communications suite has added improved call control, video calling and IM access and a rich presence integration; the suite now also supports a softphone

Managed services is a big part of the IT industry these days. Accent's managed services product (AMS) is a large part of our forward looking business plan and is a service that many of our customers are evaluating as a way to ease the burden of the internal IT staff (if one exists at all).

NetworkWorld.com has an article up about the IT managed services market and its continual growth through 2012. The article states "the global market for managed services will deliver revenues of $66 billion by 2012."

The Cisco commissioned study was performed by Ovum, a consulting firm that specializes in telecom and software consulting. Ovum "finds that the managed services generating the most interest among corporate users are managed metro Ethernet, managed IP, VPNs, managed VoIP and managed security."

"IP VPN services are the largest global managed services market, with revenues totaling $17 billion, the study finds." However, VoIP looks to be the biggest growth area in the coming years with an expected growth percentage of near 40%.

The article is pretty good and can be found here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

Enterprises are starting to use the BlackBerry in a new way: as a means of taking their desk phones mobile.

Research In Motion, known mainly as a mobile e-mail vendor, is making a surprising effort to leverage the voice side of the BlackBerry smartphone, positioning its server software as a way to blend cellular and corporate voice networks by linking the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) with the corporate PBX.

The result is a set of capabilities, achieved without major infrastructure changes, that many enterprises probably will find compelling. They include a single corporate telephone number that rings on a cell phone, an office phone, a business phone at home, or on a BlackBerry, extending PBX features to the BlackBerry. (Compare unified communications products.)

Fayetteville State University (FSU) in North Carolina experienced the power of RIM's Mobile Voice System (MVS) when a key storage-area network suffered a catastrophic failure, says Joseph Vittorelli, the university's director of systems and infrastructure. Within minutes, he connected to every staff member he needed -- regardless of where they were -- via the conference feature, made assignments and got the team working together on very short notice.

FSU, Dell and Chicago-based produce-wholesaler Anthony Morano Co. were panelists at this week's annual BlackBerry user conference, discussing fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) and MVS.

Another change at FSU is that voice mails -- a product of people's inability to connect -- have dropped to zero in many cases. Vittorelli recently got a call from a user who returned from lunch, found she had three voice mails and demanded to know why the calls had not reached her BlackBerry smartphone.

"Enterprises are realizing as they look at fixed-mobile convergence and unified communications that mobility is a big part of this," says David Heit, director of software product management, who focuses on MVS, server software introduced in 2007 and based on a product acquired when RIM bought Ascendent Systems.

MVS links the BES to a large number of PBX brands, forging voice- and call-control links between the BlackBerry cellular world, corporate telecom systems, and an array of carrier-base landline and wireless networks. Users get a new corporate phone number that overlays their cell-phone number. All inbound calls are made to that one number, ring on all of the user's phones, and connect on whichever phone the user answers. "I now have the concepts of call routing and call control [with the BlackBerry devices]," Heit says.

Heit demonstrates on his own BlackBerry, selecting a five-digit corporate extension at a desk in RIM's Waterloo, Ontario, headquarters and pressing a button to connect over AT&T's Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution network. For the first time, the BlackBerry becomes in effect the user's mobile desk phone, not just his mobile e-mail device.

It's all done without wading into what Heit calls the "thick soup" of the complexities of VoIP infrastructure deployments, of FMC architectures, and the like. "The trend to all-IP converged infrastructures will take years," he says.

You can see the whole article here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

HP said Tuesday morning that it has signed a deal to acquire IT outsourcer EDS for $13.9 billion, or $25.00 per share.

The deal has been approved by both companies' boards of directors, and is expected to close in the second half of this year.

HP said it will more than double its services revenue.

The deal will greatly expand HP's IT services business and catapult it to the number two spot close behind IBM, whose Global Technology Services division has long been a strong profit generator for the company.

"I see [the acquisition] as an attempt by HP to really go head to head with IBM in a much more meaningful way, especially in technology services and IT outsourcing." Dana Stifler, research director with AMR Research, said Monday, while the two companies were still in talks.

The worldwide market for IT services was worth $748 billion in 2007, an increase of 10.5 percent from the year before, according to recent figures from Gartner. IBM led the market with about $54 billion in revenue, followed by EDS with $22 billion. HP was in fifth place with revenue of $17 billion, behind Accenture and Fujitsu.

Buying EDS will grow HP's services business and allow it to offer a wider range of services to attract large business customers. EDS is strong in infrastructure management services and also custom application services, where it helps companies to design, integrate and manage applications.

EDS is less strong in providing services for packaged applications, however, and the acquisition will not give HP a big lift in the type of business consulting services delivered to line managers and business executives either, Stiffler said Monday.

You can see the entire article here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

Engineers testing a recently launched Japanese data communications satellite have succeeded in establishing a two-way Internet link running at 1.2G bps (bits per second) each way, they said Monday.

The speed represents a record for satellite communications, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

Cloud computing is all the rage these days, you've even seen articles about it on this site. But can you provide the true definition of cloud computing? Can anybody!?!? Well, Joyent hosting got together with some of the big boys in technology and tried to define cloud computing. Interviewees include Tim O’Reilly, Dan Farber, Rafe Needleman, Brian Solis, and Stowe Boyd. Check out the video below and let us know what you think of the cloud computing phenomenon.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

By David Newman, Network World Lab Alliance , Network World , 04/28/2008