Technics Today.com

NetApp Support of Intel Adapter Gives Customers More Options to Reduce Costs and Improve Performance

NetApp

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced it will support the Intel® Ethernet X520 family of SFP+10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters. This extends NetApp’s ecosystem of tested Ethernet solutions and offers customers more ways to deploy an end-to-end Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) infrastructure. By offering customers tested options to make the transition from a Fibre Channel infrastructure to a high-performance FCoE infrastructure, NetApp helps them increase the flexibility of their IT to manage more storage and protocols at lower costs.

10GbE unified networking provides a simple, flexible, and well-understood fabric for today’s dynamic data centers and lays the groundwork for new computing models, including cloud computing. With long histories of leadership in Ethernet storage and networking, NetApp and Intel are helping drive the transition to a unified data center on 10GbE. Both companies were early supporters of FCoE. NetApp is the first storage vendor to support native FCoE storage, and Intel is the first Ethernet adapter vendor to support Open FCoE (www.open-fcoe.org), which enables FCoE in standard 10GbE adapters.

“NetApp’s core belief is that unified storage helps our customers achieve business breakthroughs by giving them a universal storage solution to support all aspects of their business,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. “By enhancing our product portfolio with supported 10GbE and Open FCoE products from Intel, we’re giving customers the flexibility they need to set up unified Ethernet solutions in their existing environments and realize substantial benefits in cost reduction, ease of use, and efficiency.”

“It is exciting to see NetApp support Intel technology to advance 10GbE and Open FCoE and help customers consolidate their data centers,” said Tom Swinford, vice president and general manager, LAN Access Division, Intel Corporation. “The Intel Ethernet X520 family of 10GbE server adapters makes it easier for customers to move to a single platform, reduce the cost of building out, and maintain their storage network.”

NetApp® unified storage supports customers’ existing Fibre Channel investments as well as FCoE, iSCSI, and NAS, allowing them to take a phased approach to consolidating their data centers around Ethernet. This single platform approach allows customers to transition their existing Fibre Channel infrastructure with new, cost-effective FCoE technology, helping them consolidate and simplify their storage infrastructure. This can reduce the amount of storage hardware customers need in their data center, which in turn can lead to significant reductions in power use and administrative overhead. By working with Intel, NetApp hopes to make it even easier for customers to consolidate around 10GbE and FCoE by working with vendor technology they already know and trust.

Customers such as Databasement, a leading cloud-based storage provider, are achieving operational and capital savings as well as enhanced performance with NetApp unified storage and FCoE. Since Databasement serves a diverse set of clients, all with different needs and price points for performance, availability and capacity, the company looked to NetApp and its solutions partners to help safeguard and simplify its customers’ data storage. NetApp helped Databasement easily manage any protocol and offer its customers 10GbE FCoE as a high-performance yet low-cost option without deploying additional hardware or affecting service levels.

“Since Databasement’s founding, in 2001, NetApp has been one of the most important technologies in our portfolio, providing the flexibility and efficiency we need to be able to keep costs down and performance up and provide our customers with a full range of storage options,” said Rob Christ, Databasement’s founder and director. “Regardless of what setup the customer has, we can use IP-based protocols such as iSCSI and FCoE on our side to keep costs down. The more options we can provide our customers, the better we’re able to serve their needs, and that’s why we rely on NetApp’s unified storage.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

EXL Service Holdings, Inc. (“EXL”) (Nasdaq:EXLS), a leading provider of outsourcing and transformation services, today announced the signing of a multi-year contract with Petrogas, the largest independent operator of the Applegreen chain of service stations in Ireland.

EXL Service Holdings

Under this agreement, EXL will provide finance and accounting services to Petrogas and manage the entire finance and accounting operations from its service delivery centre in a special economic zone in Noida, India. Petrogas will gain the flexibility and scalability to continue its expansion in Ireland and the UK with a more focused approach and greater force.

EXL’s President and CEO, Rohit Kapoor stated, “We are extremely pleased to be able to work with Petrogas as they take an aggressive stance to grow and expand their business in Ireland and the UK. EXL continues to strengthen its capability in finance and accounting and looks forward to working with Petrogas to achieve their objectives of strategic cost management and driving operational flexibility while improving service levels. We will leverage our transformation capabilities in the areas of analytics and process improvement to provide Petrogas a competitive advantage as they grow their business.”

Petrogas’ CEO and Director, Bob Etchingham stated, “This is an important strategic initiative for Petrogas as the group consolidates its financial standing and profitability in a very challenging economic and banking environment in Ireland. With EXL providing our Finance and Accounting services, we are better able to focus on streamlining the back office processes supporting the expanding network of the group and licensee sites. This is particularly important as we prepare to open Ireland’s first Motorway Service Areas with six sites coming on stream in September 2010.  Longer term, we anticipate taking advantage of re-engineering and decision analytics capabilities offered by EXL to enhance our business proposition”

EXL’s finance and accounting services are designed to address multi-pronged business imperatives of the modern-day chief financial officer. The services help enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and controls within finance functions by leveraging high quality finance and accounting capabilities, strong domain focus, and flexible global delivery model.

Popularity: 1% [?]

CMO Asia Awards 2010

Jagran Solutions, India’s leading new age marketing agency that provides solutions for Brand Activation via Consumer Connect Strategies, has been conferred with an award for Social Marketing  at the CMO Asia Awards for Excellence in Branding and Marketing held at SUNTEC Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre on 23rd July 2010.

The CMO Asia awards are dedicated to high level knowledge Exchange through Opinion, Leadership & Networking amongst decision makers across industry segments in Asia. The jury at the awards comprises of seasoned professionals from Marketing, Branding, Advertising, Public Relations, Brand Strategy and Corporate Communications. It was represented by 52 countries across Asia.

Jagran Solutions was the only Activation Agency in India amongst the other big names from Branding & Marketing fraternity to have won this recognition. The award was conferred for the campaign in the rural health sector: DeenDayal Chalit Haspatal. This campaign reached to 2.2 million villagers over a period of 2.5 years. It provides education on basic health as well as providing free medical aid and basic medical aid. As part of this initiative by the Government of India, Jagran Solutions runs and manages 14 mobile hospital units under the “Deen Dayal Mobile Health Unit” initiative. These units are equipped to provide basic medical facilities and medicines each manned by a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, technician and a driver. The Project which is managed by the Emerging India / Rural Vertical of Jagran Solutions has been instrumental in designing, developing and executing grass root level campaigns which reach out to block level audiences for Corporate India as well as government initiatives.

Commenting on this achievement Ms. Ambika Sharma, COO, Jagran Solutions said, “It was humbling to be in presence of the greatest brands and marketers from across the globe. I’m thankful to CMO Asia for providing an unparalleled platform which enabled this recognition. We are particularly proud of the Health Program as it enables us to not only be part of a novel initiative but also to be able to gain great insights into the consumer category. This program caters to 3000+ consumers in need of medical aid daily. The award is a testimony of the efficacy behind such a wide-spread campaign. It also speaks for the scale and reach our rural arm is able to achieve while maintaining the complex dynamics of such a technologically advanced set up in those conditions. The Rural vertical now not only runs 26 such units but also caters to corporate clients which find their consumers in deep pockets of rural India.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Recognized for creating technology innovations for the Global Silicon Valley.

Quikr

Quikr – India’s leading horizontal classifieds website – today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the AlwaysOn Global 250 winners.  Inclusion in the AlwaysOn Global 250 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players in the Global Silicon Valley. Quikr was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Quikr and the AlwaysOn Global 250 companies will be honored at AlwaysOn’s eighth annual Summit at Stanford on July 27th, 2010, at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.

This two-and-a-half-day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries. Summit at Stanford’s goal is to identify the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities and investments in the global tech industry.

“After examining the companies that are on the AO Global 250 list, it’s obvious that innovation is not only alive and well in the Global Silicon Valley, it’s accelerating in economic power and scope.” says Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “The companies certainly represent some of the highest-growth opportunities in the private company marketplace.”

The AlwaysOn Global 250 winners were selected from among thousands of domestic and international technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and industry insiders.  The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2010 list.

A full list of all the AlwaysOn Global 250 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website at: http://www.aonetwork.com/AOStory/Announcing-2010-AlwaysOn-Global-250

Speaking about the achievement, Pranay Chulet, CEO, Quikr says, “Being shortlisted as an AlwaysOn Global 250 Winner is a result of our relentless commitment to Quikr’s users. It has always been our endeavour to make Quikr a place where people can ‘buy, sell, rent or find’ things in the shortest time and the easiest way possible. We dedicate this honour to our community of users across India who love the experience we offer, and as a result, and come back to us again and again.”

Popularity: 2% [?]