Local hard and software companies unite
IT hardware manufacturer ASI Solutions has formed an alliance with Doctrieve Corporation, a provider of knowledge management and data security software. Doctrieve managing director Earl Woolley said the strategic partnership will generate more than $12 million in growth within a year, giving the company a platform to market and sell its range of solutions to government and large organisations in Australia. Woolley said the companies have negotiated a product and marketing agreement that will marry Doctrieve's software with ASI's hardware to provide total solutions to the market. Both companies are Australian and the alliance will form the foundation for a global expansion which will start in the Asia-Pacific Region.
SAN speeds to increase ten-fold
An industry association has announced it has drafted a standard that will make storage-area networks 10 times faster. The Fibre Channel Industry Association introduced the proposed 10Gbit Fibre Channel standard for consideration. It supports single- and multimode LAN and WAN devices over distances ranging from 15 metres to 10 kilometres. The standard also supports bridging SANs over metropolitan-area networks through dense wave division multiplexing and SONET for disaster tolerance and data virtualisation. Work on the draft proposal to the American National Standards Institute began a year ago; 10Gbit adapters, hubs and storage arrays are anticipated for delivery in early 2002.
IBM meets profit expectations
IBM last week reported that its net profit for the third quarter kept pace with expectations, rising 11 per cent from the year-earlier level of $US1.76 billion to reach $1.96 billion. But IBM's third-quarter revenue increased just 3 per cent to $21.8 billion, up from $21.1 billion in the same period last year. CEO Louis Gerstner acknowledged that company executives "would like to have seen more revenue in the quarter". However, he said, IBM was held back by three things: an inability to meet demand for its microelectronic components, an unexpected slowdown in software sales last month and reduced demand for S/390 mainframes before this month's introduction of the company's 64-bit z900 model.