Jeff Burt

IBM’s “Watson” computer will finally make its appearance on “Jeopardy” in February, taking on two of the show’s all-time winners over a three-day span. The game will test Watson’s abilities to think in a human-like way, not only being able to retrieve information when requested-as is done with a normal Google search request-but also to […]

Hewlett-Packard is unveiling a new set of services to help businesses that are growing their deployment of virtualization technologies in their x86-based data centers. Called HP Critical Advantage, the services come as enterprises and smaller businesses are moving more of their mission-critical and production workloads onto virtual machines. Virtualizing the data center can help businesses […]

ShoreTel has named former Hewlett-Packard and Unisys executive Peter Blackmore as its new CEO. The appointment of Blackmore, announced Dec. 13 by the UC (unified communications) solutions vendor, ends a five-month search for a new top executive that began in July when then-CEO John Combs stepped down as part of a planned transition. Don Girskis, […]

Hewlett-Packard is rolling out what officials say are the first energy-efficient network switch modules from a major vendor that adopt the new EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) standard and take advantage of new HP software to further drive efficiency and performance. The 10 new E-Series zl modules also are another key differentiator for HP as it […]

Smartphones powered by Intel Atom processors should start appearing on the market in the second half of 2011, according to company President and CEO Paul Otellini. Speaking at the Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference in San Francisco Dec. 8, Otellini reportedly said the new smartphones will be powered by Intel’s upcoming “Medfield” 32-nanometer Atom processor. […]

Genband is the latest technology company looking to increase business by creating an online presence to show businesses and service providers interested in IP communications its wide array of applications. The solution areas initially being featured in the GenApps online showcase, which was announced Dec. 7, include UC (unified communications), integrated audio, video and UC […]

Oracle officials, a week after rolling out the latest offerings from their SPARC road map and once again pointedly challenging rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM, now is unveiling new blade servers aimed at high-performance computing and highly virtualized environments. Announced Dec. 8 at the Oracle OpenWorld Latin American show in Brazil, the SPARC T3-1B blade server […]

SGI is unveiling a modular data center offering that lets enterprises build capacity as needed and cool the IT environment using outside air or water from a hose rather than air conditioning units or chilled water. SGI is showing off the Ice Cube Air on the floor of the Gartner Data Center Conference Dec. 6-8 […]

Federal transportation officials are looking to get ahead of a story that broke last week indicating that they are looking into technologies that could block the use of a cell phone while driving as part of a larger effort to reduce accidents caused by people talking or texting behind the wheel. Headlines in numerous online […]

Dell’Oro Group analysts in February predicted the Ethernet switching space would continue to expand in 2010, fueled in large part by the growing demand for 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology both as a connectivity technology for servers and as an aggregation tool in data centers. Numbers from the third quarter appear to be fulfilling that prediction. […]

Siemens Enterprise Communications is preparing to announce enhancements to its OpenScape unified communications platform, with the key enhancement being a new cloud-based collaboration offering. Siemens’ OpenScape Web Collaboration solution is designed to enable businesses to easily, quickly and cost-effectively launch a collaboration session among multiple participants. In addition to the cloud-based offering, OpenScape UC Suite […]

Microsoft reportedly is investing in TurboHercules SAS, whose software enables enterprises to run mainframe applications on non-mainframe systems. The investment in TurboHercules marks the latest move by Microsoft to weaken IBM’s dominance of the mainframe space. According to several reports, Microsoft has invested an undisclosed amount in TurboHercules, which is one of several companies in […]