Comms manufacturer InfiNet Wireless makes carrier-grade wireless broadcast units for fixed broadband wireless access (FBWA) and wireless connectivity – its comments are part of an appeal  for new UK partners to support its strong 2011 results.

Broadband roll-out and the Olympics

Last week Infinet announced near 40 per cent growth in its global turnover for the period ending in December 2011. Though its core markets also include Russia, the Middle East and Latin America, InfiNet’s sales and marketing VP Kamal Mokrani (pictured) has claimed it experienced ‘unprecedented demand’ for its wireless solutions in the UK.

Mokrani argues the growth is driven by the UK government’s commitment to superfast broadband connectivity everywhere across the country and a rise in public safety deployments in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics.

“The results show we are on the right tracks,” said Mokrani, “while our key competitors have retracted from the market and there’s a lot of uncertainty among their channel partners.”

Sales are particularly strong among ISPs, mobile operators, service providers in the oil and gas sectors and local authorities, he reported. Infinet predicts new growth for resellers involved in the traffic management and transport sectors.

With a new product range and a global partner programme – which offers technical training and enhanced channel support – InfiNet could be the wireless broadband champion that the comms channel desperately needs, Mokrani promised.

“Our new channel programme will be aimed at attracting those partners who have been left feeling disenchanted by the recent moves of their traditional wireless vendors and who may now wish to embrace the InfiNet culture and portfolio.”

Texas based cloud hosting provider Firehost has appointed a UK sales and channel guru as it begins its European expansion. Firehost claims it has tripled its size in a year, and is looking to repeat this rate of growth in the UK, by offering better levels of service.

No long contracts?

Ken Nathan-Amissah, recruited from consultancy Broadjump, has been given the brief to recruit resellers in the UK. Speaking at Cloud Expo in London, he promised that Firehost would not imprison its customers in year long contracts with suffocating limits on performance.

“Firehost offers a monthly contract, so we constantly have to prove ourselves to our customers,” said Nathan-Ammisah. The year long contracts that the outsourcing and cloud industries have imposed on clients do them no favours at all, he argued. By breaking this simple rule, Firehost disrupted the cloud services model, he claimed.

Similarly, Firehost claimed it can offer elasticity on other resources. “Companies often get clobbered if they exceed their agreed thresholds,” said Nathan-Amissah. This has punished end users who find it impossible to predict demand in an industry where demand is characteristically, he argued. “We’ve built bursting into the system so you can scale up and down at will.”

According to Firehost, it is the first cloud host to free its customers from the constraints of a dedicated server, preferring to split all its client data across the entire server farm on its Docklands data centre. This, claims Nathan-Amissah, gives a performance dividend as it means that data can be called in quicker.

Nathan-Amissah dismissed the idea that the channel has no role in cloud computing. “We’re on a ridiculous growth curve and we need channel partners to help us repeat that in the UK,” he said.

Late in 2011, Apple’s legal counsel scored a temporary injunction from the German courts that blocked Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1, claiming the tablet copied the iPad. Samsung responded by releasing the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, modified to sidestep the ban.

In November, Apple responded with a preliminary injunction against the revised tablet. The courts will apparently hand down a decision on that case in early February.

It’s not over for Samsung

This most recent decision by the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court upholds the sales ban on the original, unmodified Galaxy Tab 10.1. According to patent expert Florian Mueller, who wrote about the court proceedings in a posting on his Foss Patents blog, the smaller Galaxy Tab 8.9 “falls within the scope of that injunction”.

However, he did not see that all hope is lost for Samsung. “The appeals court based its decision on a violation of Germany’s unfair competition law,” he wrote, “while the lower court’s ruling was based on a finding of violation of a “community design”, the European equivalent of a US design patent.”

Because of the uniqueness of Germany’s unfair competition laws, he added, “Apple can’t replicate the German decision in other countries.” Also, despite the headline-generating nature of these preliminary injunctions, Samsung also has some time before what he described as “the full-blown main proceedings”, which will involve “Apple’s design-related claims against a total of 15 Samsung products.”

At this point, he sees the battle continuing well into the future. “Apple’s and Samsung’s claims against each other continue to have a very high drop-out rate in different jurisdictions,” he wrote in a separate posting on his blog. “Since both companies are doing very well (with Apple being not just highly but even unbelievably profitable), they can afford to keep going, and at this point neither litigant has the leverage to force its rival into a settlement.”

Over the past few months, Apple has failed to have Samsung’s Galaxy tablets and smartphones banned in the United States. Other courtroom battles continue all over the world, including Europe and Asia. Although Apple’s iPad and iPhone claim a considerable portion of the tablet and smartphone markets, the devices are facing down an ever-broadening collection of rival Android devices from various manufacturers.

That’s the strong implication of a new White Paper from IBM, although Big Blue spokespeople are at pains to minimise any threat to their partner “ecosystem”. The paper was released the same week as Cloud Expo Europe comes to London’s Olympia exhibition centre.

Club clouds and catalogue services

“There are changing models of consumption,”  said Laura Colvine, IBM cloud strategy leader for the UK and Ireland.”We’ve seen a ‘clubbing together’ start to form”.

Organisations are starting to set up localised “club clouds”, for their own benefit and that of their users, Colvine told TechWeekEurope in London.

New York City, for example, has a municipal shared services cloud, which lets residents access different departments on line, and streamlines the way they work together.

For instance, anyone applying for a New York parking permit, must prove they have paid their local taxes, but the parking and tax departments have separate legacy systems, so previously, customers had to access both services separately.

The shared cloud automates that with a “veneer” front end which can access both services, so it can extract the necessary evidence from the tax system, and then handing the user back to the parking system to get a permit.

As well as streamlining the user experience, the system also streamlined the organisations involved. The New York municipal “club cloud” was built by the user organisations and IBM, without a third party.

“Clubs are driven out of end customer requirements,” said Colvine. While there are still “commodity” and “component” cloud services, they are increasingly being bundled up into more functional services in catalogues, she added.

In the New York case, this squeezed out potential partners she conceded, but said overall the cloud would provide more opportunities for an ecosystem: “There will be cannibalisation, but new areas will also emerge,” she said. In particular, small and medium enterprises are being encouraged, she said.

The paper, Exploring The Role Of Ecosystems In Evolving Markets, makes none of this very explicit. It is a pitch for IBM as a provider of multi-supplier ecosystems for shared clouds, which makes the point that customers will demand and get a better deal in access to online services, and suggests that shared ecosystems will provide this.

“Cisco has three operating systems, IOS [for routers], NX-OS [for its converged data centre products] and XR [for service providers],” she said. “We don’t think there will ever be one OS. The requirements are different.”

Cross-pollinated code

She did, however, point out that common, platform-independent code would be consolidated into one group: “We are cross-pollinating between IOS and NX-OS, creating APIs in systems so apps can connect quicker.”

Likewise, Cisco itself has been simplified, dumping its consumer products and conslidating into five lines of business: data centre, enterprise, service provider, collaboration and security.

“We are simplifying the way customers buy our products,” said Warrior (pictured centre, with Olympic 5000m contender Emily Pidgeon – brought in at the left by green screen and telepresence). “We used to be organised by product line.” The leaders in the five areas all have actual spend so they can “manage portfolios”.

Part of Cisco’s consolidation has been its unified computing system (UCS) move, which saw it step into servers, where it now claims to have 17 percent market share, coming third in the market.

The next obvious step might be to enter storage, adding the third major part of data centres, but Warrior said this would not be a good move: “There is a danger in trying to do everything,” she said, no doubt to the relief of current partners EMC and NetApp.

The keynote and “question and answer” sessions hinted at future announcements for tomorrow including the British Innovation Gateway (BIG) which will be a virtual national incubator centre, and an expansion of Cisco Academies, which have been set up in boroughs in London, around the Olympic site.

There was also talk of LISP – a new protocol designed by Cisco engineers, which will be proposed as a standard. It stands for Location ID Separater Protocol, and is designed to let users switch easily between mobile devices on different networks without losing the thread of their work sessions.

Ex Homeland Security chief Stewart Baker says any company on the Internet could now be imitated

Confidence in the security industry has been rocked by reports of multiple breaches in the world’s flagship infrastructure protector.

VeriSign, the company charged with safeguarding more than half the world’s web sites, has admitted it was hacked repeatedly in 2010. The infrastructure services giant attempted to bury its guilty secret in its quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in October, but the revelation has found a wider audience after a Reuters report yesterday.

The damaging news has rocked confidence across the world as the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov is under question.

VeriSign Didn’t Give It to Us Straight – Gov

VeriSign executives deny the attacks breached the servers supporting its Domain Name System (DNS) network, but could rule out that breaches might affect any of the 50 billion queries it processes daily.

Now there are fears in the security channel that hackers will use stolen data to direct victims to faked sites and intercept email.  ”That could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net,” said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

The VeriSign attacks were only recently discovered in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.

It’s Very Serious Indeed Says Ex Verisign CTO

Ken Silva, who was VeriSign’s chief technology officer for three years until November 2010, said the vague language in the SEC filing indicated that VeriSign “probably can’t draw an accurate assessment” of the damage.

If Verisign’s SSL processes were corrupted, the implications wold be very serious indeed, said security consultant Dmitri Alperovich, president of Asymmetric Cyber Operations. ”You could create a Bank of America certificate or Google certificate that is trusted by every browser in the world,” he said.

Symantec, which now owns Verisign’s certification business, played down these fears. “There is no indication that the breach was related to the acquired SSL product production systems,” said spokeswoman Nicole Kenyon.

The new E-Class Flash Memory System, loaded exclusively with enterprise-grade NAND flash, features complete redundancy and no single point of failure, Nimbus founder and CEO Tom Isakovich told eWEEK.

A feat of engineering

“This is the most scalable and highest-density solid-state storage system yet engineered,” Isakovich said. “It has more than three times the density of standard 15K RPM [hard] disk arrays.”

An E-Class system supports up to 500TB of capacity in one logical pool while consuming as little as five watts of electricity per terabyte, Isakovich said.

Since it has no single point of failure, Nimbus’ E-Class is ticketed for high-intensity applications such as enterprise-wide server virtualisation, Web infrastructure, database clusters, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and high-performance computing.

The E-Class platform consists of a pair of redundant controllers and up to 24 solid-state storage enclosures, Isakovich said. Each controller can support up to four active-active I/O modules, including the connectivity choices of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand.

The Nimbus Halo storage operating system is a unified SAN and NAS software stack currently in operation at about 200 customer installations. It automatically detects controller and path failures to provide no disruptive failover, Isakovich said. The system supports online software updates and online capacity expansion.

Using RAID protection and hot-swappable NAND flash, power and cooling modules, components can be replaced without needing to take the system down.

The Nimbus E-Class is available now, with a 10TB dual-controller configuration priced at £95,205. The full version of Halo storage operating system is included in the price.

The combined entity will see close to 20 million page impressions per month, and five million unique users.

The two companies will merge their Munich operations, with all six websites coming under the NetMediaEurope brand.

Dominique Busso, CEO of NetMediaEurope, commented: “We have established a strong brand across Europe, and aim to provide a one-stop shop for advertisers and sponsors looking for innovative opportunities to reach out to target audiences. “This acquisition makes NetMediaEurope one of the key tech players in Germany, and will provide our international client base with powerful advertising reach.”

NetMediaEurope publishes in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and was founded in July 2007 as a result of an MBO by senior VNU managers. In 2010-11, the company saw revenue growth of over 30 percent. And, during 2012 it plans to make further acquisitions across its relevant markets.

Dominique Busso added: “This is an exciting phase for the business, and we look forward to developing the brands, as well as serving our global client base and community of tech professionals moving forward.”

This follows a price cut in US markets to $299 (£192) for the top of the range model, where previous prices for an entry level device were $499 (£320).

Sinking ship?

The new reduced prices for the PlayBook start at £169 for the 16GB device, to £329 for the 64GB tablet. The same prices are offered at Carphone Warehouse, as well as at PC World, and also Currys.

This is not the first price drop for the tablet. In September, US PlayBook prices were reduced followed by a UK price drop in October, where PlayBook prices were cut by £150 across all models, with the 16GB device falling from £400 to £250.

This new price drop raises concerns about the future of the device, which has failed to perform in the market and resulted in RIM taking a financial hit from the PlayBook.

The device is due for a major software update in February, but with current speculation over the future of RIM’s leadership and the company as whole, this price cut hints at stormy weather ahead.

The admission came in a new filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Write-down Expected

In the filing, CSC warned its shareholders that negotiations with the British Government over its controversial participation in the NHS NPfIT had broken down, and it now expects a write-down of its investment in the project.

“CSC previously disclosed that in May 2011 it had substantially completed negotiation of the terms of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the NHS which set forth the key terms of a reduction in the scope, and related contract value downgrade, of the parties’ agreement relating to the NHS IT programme,” said the American IT services giant in its filing.

“However, CSC recently was informed that neither the MOU nor the contract amendment then under discussion would be approved by the government,” it said. It also stated that CSC will continue discussions with the NHS in the New Year.

“As a result of the circumstances described above, CSC has concluded, as of the date of this filing, that it will be required to recognise a material impairment of its net investment in the contract in the third quarter of fiscal year 2012,” it said.

CSC warned its shareholders that until CSC and the NHS concluded their discussions, it was unable to estimate the amount of such impairment. However, it admitted that such impairment could be equal to CSC’s net investment in the contract, which was approximately £943 million, as of 30 November.

CSC U-Turn

“There can be no assurance that CSC and NHS will enter into a contract amendment or, if a contract amendment is negotiated and entered into, that the contract amendment as finally negotiated will be on terms favourable to CSC,” the filing said.

“As a result of the foregoing, CSC is withdrawing its previously disclosed fiscal year 2012 financial guidance,” it concluded.

The admission is a climbdown by the services giant, which even as recently as 8 December stated in a regulatory filing that it was entitled to receive another £2 billion from the British taxpayer, thanks to an extended contract from the British Government.

A Department of Health (DH) spokesperson told TechWeek Europe that it was determined to secure value for money for the British taxpayer.

“We are in discussions with CSC and it would not be appropriate to comment further at this point,” a DH spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “However, we are determined to ensure that the NHS has access to working solutions at a cost which provides value for money for UK taxpayers.”

Costly Failure

The Coalition government confirmed in September it was finally axing the project. It said at the time that the £12.7 billion NHS Programme for IT would be “urgently dismantled”, and it gave local health trusts the power to choose their own systems.

The NpfIT was hugely controversial right from the start. The project was meant to provide better communications across the NHS infrastructure, based around a central database for patients’ medical records, scans and X-rays. It was also perhaps one of the most expensive of the many failed IT projects created by the Labour government.

The project was initially set up in 2002, but it came under continuous criticism for rising costs and dubious management. The Coalition government inherited the deeply unpopular project when they came to power and, in September 2010, pledged to pull the plug on NpfIT, claiming that a centralised, national approach was no longer required.

The NPfIT was thought to be the world’s biggest civil IT programme, but its death was assured in August when the House of Common’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) demanded its axing. The PAC also laid the blame squarely on major suppliers BT and CSC.

CSC in particular came in for stinging criticism at that time.

“CSC has yet to deliver the bulk of the systems it is contracted to supply and has instead implemented a large number of interim systems as a stopgap,” said the PAC at that time. “The Department [of Health] has been in negotiations with CSC for over a year, and told us that it may be more expensive to terminate the contract than to complete it.”