Briefs: September 27, 2004

GE ACCESS CHANGES ITS MONIKER

"GE has 180 companies that go to market differently, using the brand differently. They want to re-establish the brand," McDermott said.

The distributor started its internal rebranding two weeks ago and notified solution providers last week. Solution providers should not see any change in service from Access Distribution, McDermott said.

Eleven GE companies will continue to use the GE name, including GE Commercial Finance, which has Access Distribution under its umbrella. The name changes within GE will be subtle, said Mark Kulaga, director of corporate communications and marketing at Access Distribution.

Access Distribution has not changed its corporate infrastructure within GE, Kulaga said. The company is still under Vendor Financial Services, which is under GE Commercial Finance, which is under GE.

SUBSCRIPTIONS BOOST RED HAT SALES, PROFITS FOR 2Q 2005
Red Hat reported strong revenue growth and higher profit for its fiscal 2005 second quarter, which it attributed to growing acceptance of its Enterprise Linux operating system and increased software subscription sales.

For the quarter ended Aug. 31, Red Hat reported earnings of $11.8 million, or 6 cents per share, compared with earnings of $3.6 million, or 2 cents per share. Revenue was $46.3 million, compared with $29 million for the year-ago quarter.

Sales included 144,000 subscriptions to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux software, up substantially from the 26,000 subscriptions sold the same time last year.

INTEL ADDS HIGH-END SUPPORT TO LOW-COST CELERONS
Intel will provide high-end functionality to its low-cost Celeron lineup, and has ported older versions of the Celeron to a higher-performing chipset.

The chip maker said it is now shipping the Celeron D 340 with support for PCI Express, Intel High Definition Audio and the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900.

The Celeron D 325, 300 and 335 will also be compatible with Intel's 915 Express chipsets. Previously, they worked only with Intel's 845 and 865 chipsets.

IRONPORT STRENGTHENS C-SERIES
IronPort Systems this week released version 4.0 software for its C-Series E-Mail Security Appliances, adding a virus outbreak filter to the functionality of the product line.

The virus outbreak feature responds to security data sent round-the-clock from IronPort's SenderBase information service. The service monitors the Web for potential virus outbreaks and triggers the appliance to take proactive steps to protect the network, said Craig Taylor, vice president of technology for IronPort.

Users running earlier versions of C-Series software can perform a free upgrade to 4.0 without having to replace the appliance, Taylor said.

Adding the virus outbreak feature gives 4.0 users more security atop the existing virus protection, content scanning, spam detection and reputation filtering available in earlier versions, according to the company. C-Series appliances are designed for large enterprises, ISPs and technically savvy mid-sized businesses. They start at around $10,000, according to IronPort.

SYMANTEC REPORTS SECURITY FLAW IN FIREWALL, GATEWAY
Symantec has announced that several of its firewalls and gateways are vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks, and has released firmware to fix them. Affected are Symantec Firewall/VPN Appliance 100, 200 and 200R and the Symantec Gateway Security 320, 360 and 360R.

Symantec noted on its Web site that the vulnerabilities "are remotely exploitable and can allow an attacker to perform a Denial of Service attack against the firewall appliance, identify active services in the WAN interface and exploit one of these services to collect and alter the firewall's configuration."

The Symantec Firewall/VPN Appliances models 100, 200 and 200R are vulnerable to all three attacks, while the Symantec Gateway Security models 320, 360 and 360R are not vulnerable to the Denial of Service attack, but are vulnerable to the other two, Symantec said.

MICROSOFT TARGETS BACKUP SOLUTION AT SMB MARKET
Microsoft has entered the backup and recovery market with its Data Protection Server, a disk-to-disk approach suitable for the SMB space.

Microsoft expects that the prospect of eliminating tape drives will be attractive to small-business buyers. For one thing, disk-to-disk systems greatly improve recovery times compared with tape drives. Microsoft said its software can recover data in minutes, while recovery using tape drives can take hours or even days and requires IT intervention.

Jeff Price, a senior director at Microsoft, said byte-level extraction makes Data Protection Server fast. "DPS logs changes on continuous processes at the byte level, so it could replicate only a 5-Mbyte change to a 20-Gbyte file," he said.

Data Protection Server, used in conjunction with Active Directory and Windows Server 2003, makes backup and recovery a continuous process and does not impede desktop functions, according to Microsoft.

SONY LAUNCHES VAIO AIMED AT SMALL BUSINESSES
Sony last week launched its first Vaio notebook designed exclusively for SMBs.

The new B series is based on Sony's Z1 design and combines the most-requested business features, the company said, including integrated wireless, a 14-inch display, full keyboard and automatic resolution sync with projectors and external monitors.

Weighing in at just 5 pounds, the B series will remain static to give businesses a stable platform that is available and thus deployable for an extended period.

Prices for the B series Vaio notebooks start at $1,050. Both build-to-order and configure-to-order models are slated to be available by the end of the month.

BMC UPGRADES EVENT MANAGER
BMC Software last week shipped an upgrade of its event management system that simplifies the process of prioritizing events.

In addition, the company unveiled a new version of its service-level management system, which includes better reporting capabilities.

An event management system is software that monitors servers, workstations and network devices for routine and nonroutine events. People logging into a network, for example, would be a routine event, while repeated log-on failures could indicate someone is trying to hack into a network.

BMC Event Manager 4.1 includes a new graphical user interface that's meant to simplify the writing of rules for handling events.