Avnet Technology Solutions UK Expands Specialist Storage Team to Drive New Business Opportunities for Hitachi Content Platform Storage Solution

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March 28, 2012 - Avnet Technology Solutions UK Expands Specialist Storage Team to Drive New Business Opportunities for Hitachi Content Platform Storage Solution

Bracknell, UK -- Avnet Technology Solutions, the global IT solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), is gearing up to drive increased demand in the UK for the Hitachi Content Platform from Hitachi Data Systems. Avnet has invested in fixed and mobile demonstration equipment and technical training. In addition, the Avnet team has been expanded to help existing and newly recruited business partners take the Hitachi Content Platform into the marketplace.

The advanced storage and data management capabilities of the Hitachi Content Platform are designed to help IT organisations address challenges posed by ever-growing volumes of unstructured data. Using a common platform, the Hitachi Data Systems approach to what are known as 'file and content solutions' provides a single infrastructure that can support a wide range of data types, applications and users, all with different service level needs.

Mike Fearon, Hitachi Data Systems business manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, commented, "In an increasingly content rich world, Hitachi Data Systems is leading the way with technology that will have the same impact on storage that MP3 players had on music. We have stepped up our resources to work with the business partners to gain traction in the marketplace and fully exploit the potential of the Hitachi Content Platform. Our investment in this area, and the fact that we are the only UK channel player to hold the Hitachi Content Platform technical accreditation, makes Avnet the foremost Hitachi Data Systems file and content specialist distributor in the UK."

According to Avnet and Hitachi Data Systems, there is real market potential for the solution across diverse industries such as healthcare, media and contact centres. In healthcare, for instance, Hitachi's Clinical Repository, based on Hitachi Content Platform, overcomes the major challenge of searching, retrieving and storing documents and medical images across different IT applications. One platform is created that acts as the central repository for storing all medical images regardless of the image format (scans, x-rays, etc.) thereby saving time, increasing efficiency and ultimately, improving patient care.

Avnet business partners have the opportunity to attend an Avnet HealthPath™ University hosted by Hitachi Data Systems on 9th and 10th May in central London. The two-day programme provides a dedicated environment in which to learn more about the Hitachi Content Platform and Hitachi Clinical Repository products specifically tailored to the health sector. The keynote speaker is Steve Wragg, an experienced IT professional and Chairman of Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and attendees will benefit from his first-hand knowledge and insight into strategic issues such as healthcare buying and spending patterns and how to influence purchasing decisions.

Neill Burton, vice president of channels and alliances at Hitachi Data Systems, added, "The Hitachi Content Platform takes a totally fresh and radical approach to the complex issue of storage, rethinking how data is categorised and utilised. Combining Hitachi Data Systems' technology with the expert knowledge and outreach of Avnet, we are confident we have the support necessary to maximise the market opportunity that exists for the storage and retrieval of growing volumes of unstructured data."

To find out more about Avnet's partnership with Hitachi Data Systems, the Hitachi Content Platform or to register on Avnet's HealthPath University for Health in May, please visithttp://www.ts.avnet.com/uk/health.

About Avnet Technology Solutions
As a global IT solutions distributor, Avnet Technology Solutions collaborates with its customers and suppliers to create and deliver services, software and hardware solutions that address the business needs of their end-user customers locally and around the world. For fiscal year 2011, the group served customers in more than 70 countries and generated US $11.5 billion in annual revenue. Avnet Technology Solutions (www.ats.avnet.com) is an operating group of Avnet, Inc.

About Avnet
Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT), a Fortune 500 company, is one of the largest distributors of electronic components, computer products and embedded technology serving customers in more than 70 countries worldwide. Avnet accelerates its partners' success by connecting the world's leading technology suppliers with a broad base of more than 100,000 customers by providing cost-effective, value-added services and solutions. For the fiscal year ended July 2, 2011, Avnet generated revenue of $26.5 billion. For more information, visit www.avnet.com.

National Cooperative Refinery Association to Pay $700,000 in Penalties for Violations at Kansas Refinery and Storage Facility

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7

901 N. Fifth St., Kansas City, KS 66101

Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Nine Tribal Nations

National Cooperative Refinery Association to Pay $700,000 in Penalties for Violations at Kansas Refinery and Storage Facility

Contact Information: Chris Whitley, 913-551-7394, whitley.christopher@epa.gov

Environmental News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Kansas City, Kan., March 27, 2012) - The National Cooperative Refinery Association (NCRA) has agreed to pay $700,000 in penalties to the United States and the State of Kansas, and perform a series of injunctive relief actions, to settle violations of federal environmental laws and the Kansas State Implementation Plan at its petroleum refinery and underground storage facility in McPherson County, Kan.

As part of a consent decree lodged yesterday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., NCRA will pay $475,000 in penalties to the United States and $225,000 to the State of Kansas. As a part of the settlement, NCRA has agreed to spend approximately $745,000 on supplemental environmental projects involving the purchase of emergency response equipment and services for the benefit of citizens and emergency response agencies in McPherson County.

NCRA owns and operates an 85,000-barrel-per-day petroleum refinery on Iron Horse Road in the city of McPherson, Kan., and an associated underground product storage facility in the nearby unincorporated community of Conway, Kan.

According to a complaint by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, NCRA:

• Violated the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) by failing to maintain and operate the refinery’s Unicracker Unit and associated air pollution control equipment in a manner consistent with good air pollution control practices, resulting in a 20-day flaring event that caused significant emissions of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere.
• Violated the CAA and the Kansas State Implementation Plan by exceeding emission limits contained in a construction permit for the refinery’s Unicracker Unit heater and Hydrogen Unit heater.
• Violated the CAA by failing to fully implement a Risk Management Program at the refinery and the underground product storage facility.
• Violated the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) by failing to make timely reports of releases of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide during four separate flaring events at the refinery, including the previously mentioned 20-day flaring event.
• Violated the EPCRA by submitting incomplete Tier II reports, which are supposed to include the identity and inventory of on-site chemicals, to emergency responders.
• Violated the EPCRA by failing to submit an accurate and complete Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) form to EPA.

The consent decree requires NCRA to perform a series of injunctive relief actions to address its non-compliance issues and enhance future compliance through greater emphasis on the Risk Management Program. These include performing an applicability study at the refinery and underground storage facility, providing detailed tank inspection timelines and information, and documenting the resolution of process hazard analyses and compliance audit findings.

For the CAA violations, the relief involves training for start-up procedures and revision to applicable limits for the refinery’s Unicracker Unit Heater.

Relief associated with the EPCRA and CERCLA violations includes completion of a compliance review for Tier II, TRI and episodic release reports. It also includes the submission of an associated report to EPA, retroactive release reporting, and release report training.

NCRA’s supplemental environmental projects, totaling at least $745,000, are designed to further the goals of EPCRA and the Risk Management Program, which seek to prevent accidental chemical releases, minimize the consequences of accidents that do occur, and enable local emergency responders to plan and respond effectively to chemical accidents.

The consent decree is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final approval by the court.

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Rutgers Teams With IBM to Build Powerful High-Performance Computing Center in New Jersey

IBM provides supercomputing equipment and software resources aimed at improving New Jersey’s economic competitiveness

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NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - 27 Mar 2012: Rutgers today formally launched a high-performance computing (HPC) center at the university focused on the application of “Big Data” analytics in life sciences, finance, and other industries. The center is aimed at improving the economic competitiveness of New Jersey’s public and private research organizations.

The HPC center will be part of the newly created Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI²)and will utilize supercomputing equipment and software provided by IBM in the project’s first phase. Rutgers anticipates future expansion of the center will lead to the university having one of the world’s most powerful academic supercomputers. 

The institute, powered by an IBM Blue Gene®/P supercomputer, has several goals.

·        Creating an HPC resource, with expert support, for industry in New Jersey and the surrounding region

·        Educating the New Jersey workforce and Rutgers students in working with advanced analytics and a state-of-the-art HPC center

·        Providing HPC resources to Rutgers faculty members and regional organizations, who are expanding their use of extremely large data sets 

“There is immense potential here because Rutgers and IBM have some of the best minds in high-performance computing,” said Michael J. Pazzani, vice president for research and economic development and professor of computer science at Rutgers. “The ability to conduct data analysis on a large scale, leveraging the power of ‘big data,’ has become increasingly essential to research and development.” 

“Just as important is the valuable new resource that we are creating for industry,” Pazzani said. “The Institute will collaborate with businesses that need high-performance computing capabilities but can’t justify the cost of building their own system.” 

The collaboration involving Rutgers and IBM scientists and engineers is expected to extend beyond computer science and engineering, to encompass fields such as cancer and genetic research, medical imaging and informatics, advanced manufacturing, environmental and climate research, and materials science.  

“The application of analytics to ‘big data’ has quickly emerged as the new foundry of the 21st century economy,” said Phil Guido, IBM general manager, North America. “IBM is eager to work with Rutgers to help improve New Jersey’s economic competitiveness through this center. IBM firmly believes that public-private collaboration and research can be critical in ensuring our workforce is equipped and empowered with next generation skills like analytics.” 

The IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, housed in the Hill Center for Mathematics on Rutgers’ Busch Campus in Piscataway, will be the only supercomputer available to commercial users in the state. Only eight of the nation’s 62 scientific computation centers have industrial partnership programs. The two Blue Gene/ P racks at Rutgers will be far more powerful than any computer at the university today. “Excalibur” is the name Rutgers has chosen for it, playing off the university’s sports mascot, the Scarlet Knight. 

Rutgers has agreed to purchase hardware and software from IBM, as well as entering into a three-year maintenance agreement for the equipment. . As future funding becomes available, Rutgers expects to add the latest-generation Blue Gene/Q system by the end of the year. Rutgers also envisions building an expanded facility on the Busch campus in 2013 as the system and center grows.  

Blue Gene is among the world’s leading supercomputer technologies. The Blue Gene/P system is operating in six U.S. locations, including four national laboratories and two universities. IBM is the leading manufacturer on the list of the world’s top 500 most powerful computer systems, holding the most entries. 

Manish Parashar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, is the university’s lead faculty member on the project and will direct the new institute. He said: “There is a strong correlation between having this level of sophisticated research infrastructure and research productivity. It will enable research at a scale we could not support at Rutgers before and allow students and industry to have access to HPC to a much greater degree. And this installation is the first step in creating a large-scale infrastructure at the institute, so it’s a huge milestone.” 

Parashar is director of Rutgers’ Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing and the Applied Software Systems Laboratory, and associate director of the Center for Information Assurance. He was program director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure, where he managed an approximately $150 million research portfolio, from 2009 to 2011.

“HPC is a real need because large-scale data is now central to all sciences and engineering,” Parashar said. “Science is changing dramatically, becoming very computation and data-intensive. Large-scale computing is now critical for scientists to address research challenges in diverse fields from biochemistry and genomics to material sciences and climate modeling.” 

Margaret Brennan-Tonetta, associate vice president for economic development, has been working with Parashar to launch the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute. 

“We intend to develop a premier center that sets a new standard for industry collaboration in high-performance computing,” Brennan-Tonetta said. “The institute will be engaging business and provide a valuable resource that goes far beyond hardware and software, offering real expertise and assistance. Industry will be able to come here with a problem involving data analysis and our experts will help them develop a solution.” 

Two industrial advisory panels for the RDI² are being formed, one for large-scale computation and data analytics in finance and a second for the healthcare and life sciences industries. The initial meetings of each are set for April. 

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development promotes excellence in research at Rutgers. Research is fundamental to the university’s overall mission and enhances its education and service missions. Research also contributes to economic development. Rutgers increasingly is engaged in commercialization of research through the transfer of new technologies to industry, contributing to economic development in New Jersey and nationally. From the discovery of streptomycin — the first cure for tuberculosis — to the technology behind Ask.com, Rutgers continues to make a tremendous impact in the commercial world.

GE Healthcare Announces First Graduating Class of U.S. Army Reservists from Professional Development Program

19 March 2012

GE Healthcare Announces First Graduating Class of U.S. Army Reservists from Professional Development Program

 

Externship program provides training and fosters employment opportunities for biomedical equipment specialists in the Army and private sector

MILWAUKEE – March 19, 2012 – GE Healthcare today announced the graduation of the first class from its joint externship program with the U.S. Army Reserve’s 807th Medical Command (Deployment Support) (807th MDSC). The program provides training and fosters career development for biomedical equipment specialists with the goal of producing highly skilled Soldiers for Army Reserve war and peace time missions and facilitating their employment in the civilian healthcare technology industry so Soldiers stay mission-ready.

Last year, GE established a partnership with the 807th MDSC, which manages deployment of all Army Reserve field expeditionary medical units from Ohio to California, to help address the critical need for biomedical equipment specialists both within the Command and in the private sector. The pilot program graduated seven Army Reservists. A second wave made up of seven externs is midway through the program, and a third wave will commence shortly.

The externship program aligns with GE’s commitment to strengthening America’s global competitiveness by building a more highly skilled workforce and supporting the integration of the nation’s veterans into industry. In February 2012, GE announced plans to hire 5,000 veterans over the next five years and to partner with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support its “Hiring our Heroes” initiative through career opportunities and training for veterans in 50 U.S. cities. GE Healthcare has already hired three employees through the program.

“GE is proud to count among our employees thousands of military veterans whose leadership skills and training supports our culture of dedication and commitment,” said Richard Neff, Vice President and General Manager of Service for the United States and Canada, GE Healthcare. “We are pleased with the results of this pilot program and look forward to expanding our efforts to provide career opportunities to our service men and women, addressing needs in the healthcare industry, and helping drive ‘what works’ in the American economy.”

Biomedical equipment specialists participating in the program obtain professional qualifications for both military and civilian standards. Externs complete hands-on “mission” assignments as well as Duty Military Occupational Skill Qualification requirements and acquire experience in regional medical equipment concentration sites, advanced, multi-modality biomedical training and process management training with regular progress review.

“We are pleased to collaborate with GE Healthcare to not only help meet the need for specialized biomedical training in the healthcare industry, but to also provide important opportunities for military veterans to integrate into the civilian workforce,” said Maj. Gen. L.P. Chang, Commander, 807th Medical Command.

Start-Up Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Start-Up Nicira Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants 

By QUENTIN HARDY

SAN FRANCISCO - Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon already turn millions of computers into single clouds of supermachines, managing the flow between personal computers of cat videos, e-mails and the president's recent chat on Google Plus.

Millions more of these computer servers figure out what to sell you while you browse the Web. These global systems work only because of something called virtualization, a kind of software that tricks one server into doing the tasks of several. The cost savings and flexibility revolutionized the data management business, since virtualized machines can run on cheap semiconductors.

High-price networking gear still ties together most data centers, however. Companies pay for it because managing data traffic is tougher than mere computation. Now a small company called Nicira, along with a few other scrappy players, is pursuing what is called software-defined networking, which should cut costs and make equipment more efficient.

A software-defined network, which originated in government spy agencies, is similar to server virtualization, and because of that is quite likely bad news for networking equipment makers like Cisco and Juniper Networks. If proprietary systems can be mixed together and cheap chips used in place of custom semiconductors, prices for the gear would most likely will drop.

Optimism About Year Ahead

News release from General Electric:

31 January 2012

Construction Equipment Dealers Optimistic About Year Ahead, GE Capital Survey Reveals

77% of respondents say the best time to increase inventory levels is first half

IRVING, TX – Construction equipment dealers are looking forward to improving trends in 2012 while acknowledging the challenges facing the industry, according to survey results released today by GE Capital, Dealer Finance.

Forty percent of respondents said they expect sales to increase 3%-5% this year, while 25% said they expect sales to increase 6%-8%. A full 77% said the best time to increase inventory is within the first half of 2012.

At the same time, 57% cited slack demand for new construction – both residential and commercial – as the biggest hurdle that construction equipment distributors have to overcome this year.

Slightly more than half of respondents said improvement in the U.S. economy will have the greatest impact on the construction industry. The other important factors affecting the industry are access to credit for end users (23%) and reauthorization of the federal highway spending bill (20%).

When asked what single category of construction equipment they believe will be in greatest demand this year, 37% cited earthmoving equipment and 23% cited specialty equipment such as pavers, compactors, drills, crushers and grinders.

The full survey results are available here:http://www.gelending.com/misc/Construction_Flash_Survey_Results_1-12.pdf

To stay on top of developing trends, participants can sign up for GE Capital’s Construction Industry Research Monitor here:http://www.americas.gecapital.com/insights-ideas/industry-research-monitor

“We’re dedicated to helping our customers be successful,” said Kristi Webb, commercial leader of GE Capital, Dealer Finance. “In addition to financing, we provide construction industry insights and expertise to help dealers and end-users tackle their biggest challenges so they can thrive in the year ahead.”

The Construction Equipment Distributor Survey of 65 respondents was conducted Jan. 18-19, 2012. Respondents included a variety of construction industry participants.

About GE Capital, Dealer FinanceGE Capital’s Dealer Finance business provides commercial leases and loans ranging from $5,000 to $25 million for the wholesale and retail financing of equipment to thousands in North America in over 12 industries. With long-term relationships and dedicated channel support, Dealer Finance works with small, medium and large enterprises as well as state and local governments. From web-based application submittals to online account management, its dedicated industry professionals bring knowledge and expertise to every relationship.

GE Capital offers consumers and businesses around the globe an array of financial products and services. For more information, visitwww.gecapital.com or follow company news via Twitter (@GECapital).

GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.