Press release from Apple:

Craig Federighi, Apple’s Vice President of Mac Software Engineering & Dan Riccio, Apple’s Vice President of Hardware Engineering Join Apple’s Executive Team as Senior Vice Presidents

CUPERTINO, California—August 27, 2012—Apple® today announced that Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering, have been promoted to senior vice presidents. Federighi and Riccio will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple’s executive management team.

Apple also announced that Bob Mansfield, who announced his retirement in June, will remain at Apple. Mansfield will work on future products, reporting to Tim Cook.

As senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, Federighi will continue to be responsible for the development of Mac OS® X and Apple’s common operating system engineering teams. Federighi worked at NeXT, followed by Apple, and then spent a decade at Ariba where he held several roles including vice president of Internet Services and chief technology officer. He returned to Apple in 2009 to lead Mac OS X engineering. Federighi holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Riccio, as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will lead the Mac®, iPhone®, iPad® and iPod® engineering teams. He has been instrumental in all of Apple’s iPad products since the first generation iPad. Riccio joined Apple in 1998 as vice president of Product Design and has been a key contributor to most of Apple’s hardware over his career. Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1986.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

IBM and Hydro One Team to Improve the Power Grid in Ontario

Smarter technologies to be tested on Hydro One's distribution power grid

Tab navigation

• News release
• Related XML feeds

• Contact(s) information

ARMONK, N.Y. and TORONTO - 27 Mar 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its Business Partner Telvent announced that they have been selected by Hydro One, the largest distributor of electricity in Ontario (Canada), for a new smart grid project that will help transform the province's electrical system. Together, the companies will run simulations and tests to determine the smart grid technologies that have the potential to improve power efficiency and reliability.

Installed in the 1950s, many components of Ontario's current electricity distribution system have reached the end of their service life. More recently, technological advancements, provincial governmental policy, market forces and increased environmental awareness have added pressure to the demands on Ontario's electricity distribution system.

"As equipment on our distribution system ages, it needs to be replaced. This creates an opportunity to create a world-class network with new, intelligent and sophisticated technologies to meet the changing needs of our customers," Rick Stevens, Vice President, Asset Management, Hydro One. "Our collaboration with IBM and Telvent will help Hydro One assess the next generation of distribution equipment and make the right choices for our customers looking for more reliable electricity, particularly in rural areas."

The Advanced Distribution System (ADS) project will help the utility identify and assess equipment, test new delivery models for electricity, validate the costs and benefits anticipated with a new smart grid and recommend changes to cost effectively modernize Ontario's distribution system.

The project intends to enable an increased amount of Distributed Generation into the grid as well as help increase the reliability of the current distribution system and improve outage management during large scale situations. By taking advantage of the insights gained from new data sources based on analytics, Hydro One will be able to optimize energy utilization and management for greater efficiency while accommodating consumer demand.

"Utilities around the world are investigating new smart grid technologies to help solve complex challenges caused by an aging infrastructure and increasing demand," said Guido Bartels, General Manager of IBM's Energy & Utilities Industry and Chairman of the Global Smart Grid Federation. "Together with Hydro One, we are paving the way for transformation by testing new sophisticated monitoring and control technologies that will enable the integration of renewable energy in the distribution grid while improving its reliability and responsiveness, and ensuring customer satisfaction. This will prepare Hydro One and the province of Ontario for further growth and deliver more affordable and reliable renewable energy for Ontarians."

As the overall system integrator, IBM will provide expertise in smart grid technologies, planning and implementation to oversee the reliability of the network solution. Hydro One will use the Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS), from Telvent, a real-time solution that will provide complete functionality for planning, operation and analysis of its distribution system. This will allow Hydro One to more accurately manage and plan their grid investments.

According to Telvent's Chairman and CEO, Ignacio Gonzalez, "In addition to the ADMS solution, Hydro One will benefit from the strategic collaboration between Telvent and IBM. Over the years, we have provided solutions to several large utilities to help make mid-project technology adjustments while increasing the speed of the solution development."

The project is in line with the requirements of Ontario's Green Energy and Green Economy 2009 Act ("GEGEA"), which fosters the growth of renewable and cleaner sources of energy while promoting a greener economy.

About Hydro One Hydro One provides services to 1.2 million residents of Ontario with the vast majority of its rural customers in low-density areas. Hydro One is the largest distributor of electricity with about 120,000 km of distribution lines over a rural service territory of about 640,000 square kilometers covering 75% of the province.

About IBM

IBM is involved in more than 150 smart grid engagements around the world, in both mature and emerging markets. IBM is the founding member of the Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition, a unique collaboration of utilities from around the globe who are working to accelerate the use of smart grid technologies and move the industry forward through its most challenging transformation. More about IBM's vision to bring a new level of intelligence to how the world works—how every person, business, organization, government, natural system, and man-made system interacts, can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet. 

For more information about Smarter Energy at IBM, please visit:www.ibm.com/press/smarterenergy. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

News Release from Compuware - New eBook

Compuware Launches New eBook: Java Enterprise Performance

DETROIT, March 13, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), the technology performance company, today announced the availability of Java Enterprise Performance, a new online eBook authored by technology experts at the Compuware dynaTrace^® Center of Excellence. Java Enterprise Performance is a free resource for IT senior managers, team leaders and practitioners responsible for the performance of business-critical applications. To start reading, visit: http://book.dynatrace.com.

The online book is a comprehensive compilation of state-of-the-art approaches, best practices and pragmatic solutions to support application performance management and optimization initiatives throughout the lifecycle of systems from pre-production to production, encompassing all stakeholders: architecture, development, test, deployment and production teams.

"As businesses rely more than ever on applications, application performance management (APM) has become a top operational priority; performance delays of just two seconds can cause a revenue loss of 4 percent," said Alois Reitbauer, co-author and dynaTrace Technology Strategist. "As interest in application performance grows, more people want to further their careers in this field. Our eBook provides a pragmatic reference for those who are passionate about application performance and accountable for improving it."

All key topics covered in Java Enterprise Performance — from application performance concepts and memory management to hot issues such as cloud, virtualization and more — will empower architects, developers, test and operations teams to understand, measure and optimize the performance of Java-based technologies and meet the challenges they currently face in complex enterprise environments. The eBook is being published online with new chapters added monthly. 

The first two chapters are available today:

·         Chapter One —Application Performance Concepts: considers how to become performance experts. Besides technical expertise, IT leaders need a solid understanding of how performance and scalability works. The chapter reviews how to collect and interpret data properly and which performance data is needed in a variety of use cases.
 

·         Chapter Two —Memory Management: addresses the fact that memory management is often a major contributor to application performance problems. It highlights the inner workings of memory management and garbage collection to help understand memory-related performance problems such as memory leaks or excessive garbage collection, where they come from and how to optimize applications accordingly.

·          

The authors, all members of the dynaTrace APM Center of Excellence, include: Alois Reitbauer, Andreas Grabner, and Michael Kopp. They regularly share insight and expertise with a community of over 100,000 performance professionals at about:performance (http://blog.dynatrace.com). This online book contains more than 30 years of their combined knowledge in the application performance field. The authors have worked building large-scale applications and performance tools, developed numerous training courses and are regular speakers at leading software conferences worldwide on performance-related topics.

Close the Deal Faster

News release from AT&T:


Close The Deal Faster: Interchange Solutions and AT&T Bring Sales Force Software to iPad with New App

SalesNOW App from AT&T Now Available on the App Store, Increasing Sales Team Efficiency for Both Small and Large Businesses

San Francisco, California, January 26, 2012

For salespeople who spend their days on the go, managing deals, customer contacts and activities just got easier. Interchange Solutions and AT&T* are now offering their sales force automation solution as an app for iPad. The SalesNOW App, also available for iPhone, is now available on the App Store.

Showcased for the first time today at MACWORLD 2012, the SalesNOW App from AT&T allows businesses of all sizes to:

• Maximize seller productivity with an award-winning customer relationship management (CRM) solution
• Synchronize all sales activity across iPhone, iPad and web accounts
• Collaborate more effectively with team members

The SalesNOW App from AT&T is an affordable yet robust mobile customer relationship management and sales force automation solution. It gives companies the tools they need to track all aspects of the sales cycle - managing customer contact information, recording details of negotiations and contracts and grouping emails and call logs by customer for easy retrieval.

The Seller’s Perspective

Outdoor Living Brands, a SalesNOW from AT&T customer, is a franchisor that specializes in transforming outdoor spaces into comfortable living environments. Its companies build porches, design landscape lighting, develop pest control methods and more. So, naturally, its sales personnel are often on the move.

“From 22 different solutions that met our basic criteria, and three that met our specific set of criteria, the cost to deploy SalesNOW from AT&T was only a third of the cost of other solutions. Any company that is not looking at this product should immediately put it into the mix and evaluate it. Not only did we choose the right platform – it has more extensibility than we ever imagined,” said Bob Pogue, Director of IT, Outdoor Living Brands.

“Given the growing popularity of tablets for small and large businesses alike, the new SalesNOW App for iPad comes at a perfect time,” said Chris Hill, Vice President, Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. “SalesNOW from AT&T gives mobile sales professionals exactly what they need to manage customer relationships on the go – using a smartphone, a tablet or both.”

“The iPad edition of SalesNOW is our first dedicated tablet version of the application,” said Mark Durst, CEO, Interchange Solutions. “Our customers can integrate SalesNOW from AT&T with existing applications on their iPads and customize the solution to meet their specific needs.”

For more information on the SalesNOW App from AT&T, visit the SalesNOW booth in the Mobile Apps Showcase at MACWORLD or http://go-att.us/SalesNOW.

The SalesNOW App is available for free from the App Store on iPad and iPhone or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.