ePostal News articles from February 2007

ePostal News archives from February 2007

NetDespatch puts up courier-challenging portal.
February 5, 2007... NetDespatch has set up a courier-bucking portal to handle electronic Proof of Delivery (POD), claiming it's a world first. The company describes PODXchange as an open Internet exchange that provides a central data hub for parcel carriers to...

Finland Post Group adopts Itella brand for corporate services.
February 5, 2007... Finland Post Group is changing its branding. All corporate services will now be delivered under the Itella brand in nine northern European countries, while the Posti brand will remain the marketing name used for consumer services in Finland....

Russian Post buys VeriFone systems.(Brief article)
February 5, 2007... The Russian Post is buying VeriFone's electronic payment systems. Some 13,000 of VeriFone's secure SC 5000 machines will be deployed across Russia. The systems were selected by the Multifunctional Processing Company LLC (MPC) for use...

Surety makes AbsoluteProof standards-compliant.(Surety LLC)
February 5, 2007... Surety LLC, the data integrity solutions people, has launched AbsoluteProof 6.0, a new standards-compliant version of its flagship trusted timestamp service. The company claims it's the only time-stamping method that offers long-lasting...

Steelcloud intervenes in suit against USPS.
February 5, 2007... SteelCloud, Inc, the systems integrator, has intervened on the side of the United States Postal Service to contest a lawsuit filed against the USPS by privately held M & A Technology, Inc, a rejected bidder. SteelCloud claims M & A's suit is...

Saudi Post claims biggest portal in the country.(Brief article)
February 5, 2007... The Saudi Post brags that it now has the biggest e-portal in the country. It provides e-commerce and a list of the post's products and services. It can accept online payment and customers can track their mail from the moment it was dispatched...

IBM hit with mega-buck antitrust tying charges.
February 5, 2007... Platform Solutions Inc. (PSI), the mainframe wannabe whose Itanium-based servers can run IBM's z/OS mainframe operating system as well as Windows, Unix and Linux, has sued IBM for antitrust, charging Big Blue with, among other things, tying the...

Sun to use Intel chips. Will wonders never cease.
February 5, 2007... In a move akin to the Peace of Westphalia that brought an end to that nasty little European episode known as the Thirty Years War, Sun and Intel this week formally ceased hostilities. Laying religious differences aside like the Protestants...

Good lord, Sun returns a profit!!!(Financial report)
February 5, 2007... On a roll after its detente with Intel, Sun came in with respectable numbers for a change and announced that--for some illusive reason--Guernsey-based KKR Private Equity Investors LP had put $700 million in the company in the form of...

Apple chief grilled.(Steve Jobs)(Brief article)
February 5, 2007... Federal prosecutors and SEC lawyers interviewed Apple CEO Steve Jobs last week about Apple's backdating practices. Nobody's talking about what transpired but doubtless the ground they covered included how an options award that went to him...

Microsoft quarter a solid Vista launch pad; users have to supply the rocket fuel.
February 5, 2007... On the eve of Vista and Office 2007's release to the public this week, Microsoft reported its fiscal Q2 December quarter, earning $2.63 billion, or 26 cents a share, down 28%, on revenues, up 6% year-over-year to $12.54 billion. Its operating...

IBM dumps printers.
February 5, 2007... In a deal reminiscent of the IBM-Lenovo arrangement, Ricoh is going to buy IBM's billion-dollar digital business printer unit in stages: 51% initially for $725 million cash plus a $35 million management fee and the rest progressively over three...

Wal-Mart takes some SLES off Microsoft.
February 5, 2007... Wal-Mart is gonna be taking some of those SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates that Microsoft agreed to pass out as part of its alliance with Novell. It's unclear whether Wal-Mart, a big Microsoft user, the alma mater of...

OSDL & FSF disappear into the Linux Foundation.
February 5, 2007... The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a consortium increasingly uncertain what its charter really is, and the Free Standards Group (FSG), a consortium whose charter many people have doubted is attainable, are merging. There is now...

AMD shot down in mid-flight.
February 5, 2007... The war with Intel has left high-flying AMD shot full of holes with its precious server ASPs limping and its stock price in tatters, a situation that might maintain at least until it can get Barcelona, its highly touted quad-core, out and take...

After weak first half, a strong finish at EMC.
February 5, 2007... EMC came through with Q4 results that were better than either it forecast or the Street expected. Earnings were $388.8 million, or 18 cents a share, up threefold, because of an acquisition and a restructuring in 4Q05. Revenues were up 19%...

HP accused of spying on Dell.
February 5, 2007... According to ex-HP VP of business development and strategy Karl Kamb, a guy HP fired in 2005 and is suing, HP paid the former president of Dell Japan Katsumi Iizuka for Dell's printer plans--product configurations, specifications, target costs,...

Politically incorrect patent Top 10 a thing of the past.
February 5, 2007... Adopting the new political correctness, the US Patents and Trademark Office says that it will cease to release its annual Top 10 list of companies that got the most patents after the 2006 list comes out in April. Seems the agency wants to...

My, those are big shoes you're filling.
February 5, 2007... Now it's official. Revenue-wise HP is the biggest computer company on the face of the earth raking in $91.66 billion in the year ended October 31 to IBM's $91.4 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal, that's the first time in more than...

SFS gone, done.
February 5, 2007... IBM has retired its SAN File System (SFS), the remains of its Storage Tank effort to create mainframe-style storage for distributed systems. Its flagship high-performance, scalable, sharable widget is now the General Parallel File System...

Group 1 launches a free online sales tax calculator service ahead of any Internet taxes.
February 12, 2007... Group 1 Software, the Pitney Bowes company, has launched a free online service called GeoTAX.com that is supposed to enable consumers and businesses to instantly determine and calculate local sales and use tax rates for US addresses ahead of...

Austrian Post buys 51% of Scanpoint Europe.(Scanpoint Europe Holding GmbH)
February 12, 2007... The Austrian Post has bought a majority 51% share of Scanpoint Europe Holding GmbH, giving it a position in document digitalization. Terms were not disclosed. The post describes the acquisition as "opening up new approaches to postal...

BBH service arm to standard on mySAP CRM.
February 12, 2007... Bowe Bell + Howell says it's going to standardize on mySAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and toss out any competing solutions across its service organization. It has decided the SAP widgetry will give it a "more intimate"...

IGI team gets POS deal from USPS.
February 12, 2007... Innovations Group Inc (IGI) has gotten a contract from the US Postal Service to provide mailing systems to thousands of so-called Contact Postal Units nationwide. The system will provide operators point-of-sale functionality to sell postal...

Deutsche Post lets contract to Wincor Nixdorf.
February 12, 2007... Wincor Nixdorf AG has won a large order from Deutsche Post AG. No value was given. Wincor Nixdorf will act as general contractor in equipping up to 20,000 counter positions at Deutsche Post's branches and the Postbank with new IT systems....

Melissa Data gives Canadian Address Object multi-platform capabilities.
February 12, 2007... Melissa Data has added multi-platform capabilities to the Canadian Address Object, a product that complements the company's Data Quality Suite. The Data Quality Tools Suite, which includes Address Object, Phone Object and Name Object,...

Microsoft seeks patent on build-it-yourself 'Lego' operating system.
February 12, 2007... Imagine a completely deconstructed operating system that the user, or service provider, glues together out of just the pieces he needs and pays for it a la carte. Okay, now imagine Microsoft fielding one after repeatedly telling antitrust...

Dell dumps Rollins.
February 12, 2007... Michael Dell has come back to clean up the mess left by CEO Kevin Rollins, whose immediate resignation was accepted a week ago Wednesday after the market closed. Rollins is gone from the Dell board as well as its executive suite. His departure...

Intel & IBM claim to have hit on a modern day philosopher's Stone.
February 12, 2007... Intel has figured out a way to make its 45nm chips more threatening to AMD--at least this year and adding to its current momentum--while at the same time reinforcing Moore's Law, which says transistor counts double every two years. It...

Adobe to have PDF standardized.
February 12, 2007... Adobe says it's going to send PDF to ISO for de iure standardization via AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management International. PDF is pretty much a de facto standard thanks to the fact that Adobe has published the...

Symantec diversifies again, buys Altiris.
February 12, 2007... Although Symantec anticipates having to cut $200 million of its own costs, can 5% of its staff and buy back a billion-dollar worth of its stock to keep the price up, it's going to buy Altiris, the $200 million-a-year provisioning and management...

Anti-Microsoft league complains to EC about Vista.
February 12, 2007... Hours before Vista appeared on store shelves, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Red Hat, Linspire, Adobe, Nokia and RealNetworks, banded together as the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), were reminding the European Commission of their...

IBM buys Softek.
February 12, 2007... IBM Global Services is acquiring privately held Softek Storage Solutions Corporation on undisclosed terms. Investcorp, Columbia Capital, Needham Capital Partners and Updata Partners acquired Softek from Fujitsu 22 months ago in a...

VMware Converter 3 out.
February 12, 2007... VMware has gone gold with its wizard-driven Converter 3 migration toolkit, which is supposed to automate the physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion process for creating VMware virtual machines. There is a free...

IPO-bound MySQL targets Oracle.
February 12, 2007... MySQL has introduced what it calls an all-you-can-eat one-year "Enterprise Unlimited" subscription to its database for $40,000. The "unprecedented low price" looks like it's meant to dislodge existing site licenses for Microsoft SQL...

Solid sketches out its MySQL roadmap.(Solid Information Technology)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Having turned out an up-market storage engine for MySQL capable of heavy transaction loads supporting a lot of concurrent users, Solid Information Technology has sketched out its plans to add new features to solidDB for MySQL. It says that...

Google threatens to move against Office.
February 12, 2007... Google's threat to Office is supposed to be unleashed "soon" according to the Boston Globe. Google VP and general manager of the enterprise David Girouard in town giving a speech to the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council said that...

Body count from the price war.
February 12, 2007... AMD may be bleeding all over the rug but it can salve its wounds with the balm of market share. According to Mercury Research, AMD bought itself a record 25.3% of the market for server chips in Q4 at the expense of its ASPs, which melted...

Invasion of the virtual servers.
February 12, 2007... IDC estimates that 2.3 million virtual servers were deployed last year compared to 7.7 million physical ones. It also figures that 76% of the enterprise will adopt or is planning to adopt x86 virtualization in the next 12 months. Forrester,...