Nortel* [OTC: NRTLQ] has recently won significant public sector deals in several countries across the Asia Pacific region that cover a range of emerging networking technologies including Unified Communications (UC), Ethernet Routing Switches, contact center deployments and virtual collaboration environments.

Governments are traditionally conservative in their technology buying patterns with intense scrutiny on technology decisions and long buying cycles. Nortel's continued growth in the government sector is a clear indicator of the industry's confidence in Nortel's technology and its long term ability to meet customer needs.

Nortel has seen recent success with public sector investments in Australia and New Zealand , Greater China, India , South East Asia and Japan . Central and local government departments, healthcare institutions, educational establishments, court systems, tax offices, energy and transport network providers have all upgraded or deployed new communications environments as the region's central services have dramatically improved the way in which they communicate both internally and with their external stakeholders such as citizens, suppliers and other government departments.

The government court systems in two of the region's most populous cities have invested in Nortel Unified Communications and Ethernet Routing Switch solutions. There are changing demands within modern courts, as court employees are required to be available to their clients and co-workers anytime, anywhere. This has created a high demand for end-to-end UC technologies, including full 10GE backbone support to the desktop, and leading edge UC applications. In one instance, the court was able to streamline its operations by deploying a powerful and secure data network from Nortel to support a centralized judicial system database.

In education, trials and deployments of Nortel's virtual world application known as web.alive are providing an immersive learning experience for students in both primary school and university environments. Web.alive is a virtual world software application that provides a network secured virtual world platform for collaboration, assisted virtual learning and training applications. The solution allows education providers to adapt teaching methods to the modern communications-rich world, enhancing student attention, engagement and retention. This v irtual world collaboration environment is helping learning centers deal with one of the major drawbacks of other communication technologies: the ability to give users a 'real-life' experience that is more interactive and intuitive. It is another example of how Nortel's technology is supporting the learning needs of students across the region – with other major educational deployments announced in recent times in Australia, India, Japan and South East Asia. And learning centers across the region are now looking to technology solutions as a way of safeguarding educational continuity in the face of the continued threat of a more severe swine flu pandemic.

With Nortel's unified communications solution in place, employees at Porirua City Council in New Zealand are now more accessible to their colleagues, suppliers and customers whether they are in the office or performing their duties off-site – meaning enhanced productivity and increased efficiency. The solution also allows Porirua City Council to address the unique needs of its mobile workforce, which forms over 30% of the organization and which has previously had to manage a variety of systems to stay in touch. The new multimedia contact center solution, which enables UC capabilities such as integrated voice, email, fax and instant messaging, will drive up customer service quality on offerings such as holiday programs and inspection bookings, with a focus on increased speed and an enhanced user experience.

In India , Nortel has supported the huge investment in new airport infrastructure across the country with significant voice and data solutions, together with ongoing managed service deals, in a number of the country's new international airports, including those in Mumbai, Bangalore , Delhi and Hyderabad .

And in the healthcare sector, Nortel's solutions are helping speed patient discharge procedures, improve staff efficiency, enable better communications for a mobile workforce, and improve the quality of patient care. Agile clinical communications use many of the voice and data networks components that already exist in a hospital to connect the disparate systems, people and processes in order to maximize return on investment in clinical systems and infrastructure. Healthcare providers and teaching hospitals from Singapore to Japan are relying on Nortel's solutions to support their critical communications needs.

EXAMPLES OF HOW NORTEL'S SOLUTIONS ARE SUPPORTING PUBIC SECTOR INITIATIVES

* New Zealand Public Service Association Gets Unified With Nortel and Gen-i - The New Zealand Public Service Association (PSA), New Zealand 's largest union with more than 57,000 registered members, expects to save up to 18 percent annually on call fees by migrating to a unified communications network from Nortel, Microsoft and implementation partner Gen-i. The solution gives PSA new functionality - such as unified messaging and presence - that allows operators to instantly 'see' the status of their colleagues and know exactly how to reach them, be it by phone or e-mail. The system also creates a single collection point for voicemails for all staff so no message goes unanswered.
* Taiwan Post Secures Business Continuity with Nortel Metro Ethernet Soluion - Taiwan Post, the largest postal, banking and insurance services provider in Taiwan , ensures customers will continue to be served and catastrophic failure to business operations averted in the event of disaster through a Nortel Metro Ethernet solution. Taiwan Post is ensuring business continuity with Metro Ethernet technology by enabling real-time information backup, access and recovery.
* Nortel Metro Ethernet Solution Helps Shanghai Metro Line 1 Trains Run on Time - With the Nortel Metro Ethernet solution in place, CBDTS will transmit information relating to wireless access systems, electronic monitoring, digital television and broadcasting, including comprehensive network monitoring and alerting tools. All operational and management information - voice, data and video - will be securely and accurately transmitted and monitored, ensuring seamless communications among train staff and access to the PIS (Passenger Information System) at all times.
* Nortel Provides Network Infrastructure for Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 - The Commonwealth Youth Games 2008, held in Pune , India from October 12 to 18, ran on a next-generation data network infrastructure set up by Nortel. The always-on, highly available network supporting 1,000 users, ran multimedia applications including real-time schedule updating, statistical analysis, resource coordination and media coverage helping ensure the Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 ran smoothly.
* Japan 's Kyushu University Hospital has improved patient care by fostering staff collaboration over a new medical information network based on Nortel's clinical-grade Healthcare Solutions portfolio. And in Taiwan , the wireless Taiwan Mobile Healthcare Services give Taipei-based doctors virtual access to patient medical records, high-quality diagnostic images and video, and other innovative connectivity services.
* The University of the East (UE) in the Philippines has selected Nortel to help upgrade its information technology infrastructure and to boost the performance of all its computerized and web applications systems. With this system, UE students, faculty and personnel can access UE's centralized database enabling quicker, easier, and more efficient academic, financial and administrative transactions.
* Australia 's renowned RMIT University has upgraded its Nortel data network to support new, high-bandwidth services such as media streaming, YouTube feeds and videoconferencing for staff and students across 220 campus locations. The data network allows the University to drive high-bandwidth media streaming applications across its 12,500 PCs without affecting the performance of business-critical communications and media-intense research applications.
* The Victorian Education and Research Network (VERNet) has deployed a Nortel Metro Ethernet Solution to significantly boost network capacity to provide member institutions with 'always on' high-speed broadband connectivity. This allows more than 100 research and education institutions in the state of Victoria to introduce services such as real-time, high-definition video broadcasts, offsite disaster recovery and connections to radio telescopes.
* National University of Malaysia Unleashes Student Learning With Nortel - Formed to deliver an innovative education with roots in traditional knowledge and culture, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia(UKM) is expanding its online usage by introducing a range of online applications including e-learning, network-intensive research applications, VoIP, IPTV and more. These applications empower students and faculty to teach and learn in collaborative new ways, and their successful deployment provides an important competitive differentiator for universities.

QUOTE

François Lançon, leader, enterprise, Nortel Asia/EMEA

'Government agencies and departments face their very own set of business, policy and network technology challenges. Nortel is working with governments and public sector institutions across the Asia Pacific region to improve communications and collaboration, helping governments in their quest to better serve citizens, businesses and their community, and protecting government information, critical infrastructure and key assets. '

Peter van der Burg, Manager, Information Systems, Porirua City Council

'The key driver in engaging Nortel through its partner Gen-i was that the time had come to update our existing Nortel PABX – which no longer had the capacity to serve the growing communication needs of some of our new sites. Nortel helped us analyze our current and future communications needs and provided us with a clear development roadmap. We now have a platform in place that will provide us with a fully unified communications solution to service the ever changing needs of the community.'

'As a first step, the new technology is already helping to provide a better workplace environment that we think will be instrumental in both retaining and attracting new staff. Providing a way of measuring and improving our customer service performance will allow us to develop a more proactive approach, bringing us closer to our customers and their needs. Future services such as federated instant messaging and the ability to link communications into our other business processes will enable us to meet and exceed the expectations of all those who interface with the Council.'

About Nortel

Nortel delivers communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com . For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news .

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as "could", "expects", "may", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "targets", "envisions", "seeks" and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on Nortel's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and the actual outcome may be materially different from those contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel's Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.

**This is a 3rd party link as described in our Web linking practices.

— WebWireID107183 —

Under this agreement ONDD will provide insurance for third party financing for the purchase of Alcatel-Lucent telecommunications equipment by service providers worldwide.

'This agreement demonstrates ONDD's commitment to supporting Alcatel-Lucent export transactions worldwide, in recognition and support of the critical role Alcatel-Lucent's Belgian operations play as a centre of expertise in R&D, export and project management for the company. This is an important milestone in our ongoing long lasting relationship with Alcatel-Lucent,' said Stefaan Van Boxstael, Deputy Head of Underwriting from ONDD. 'This agreement with ONDD allows Alcatel-Lucent to provide financing to its customers for contracts with sourcing on a global level involving technologies in the fields of optics, access, mobile, IP and applications and creates new ways for Alcatel-Lucent to meet customer requirements for worldwide sourcing.'

As a first result of this agreement, Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking has arranged an ONDD-backed loan facility in favour of Turk Telekom, to finance various contracts between Turk Telekom and Alcatel-Lucent for a global amount of EUR 46 million. In line with Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regulations, part of the local services was also integrated in this financing.

The loan facility could be extended to support additional new contracts between Turk Telekom and Alcatel-Lucent. The buyer's credit will be applied to the full foreign portion, on a global level, of contracts concluded between Alcatel-Lucent Teletas (Turkey) and Turk Telekom for technologies sourced from different Alcatel-Lucent entities around the world.

'Our overall agreement with ONDD, as demonstrated by this first transaction with Turk Telekom, provides a powerful tool for Alcatel-Lucent to help its customers meet their financing needs,' said Paul Tufano Alcatel-Lucent's CFO. 'A number of other new opportunities have already been identified, and our agreement with ONDD will provide Alcatel-Lucent with further flexibility regarding its project financing needs around the world.'

About ONDD
ONDD, the Office National Du Ducroire | Nationale Delcrederedienst, is Belgium's public export credit insurer, specializing in commercial and political risk insurance, guaranteed by the state.
As an integral part of the economic and export-oriented policy on Belgium's international trade, ONDD primarily provides cover against credit and political risks to support Belgian exports and outward investments where private sector risk cover is unavailable, due to the risk profile of these activities. Such covers have clear economic importance in Belgium, since exports of goods and services contribute more than 80% of GDP.
ONDD is allocated a 'AA+' rating by Standard & Poor's. For more information, please visit external linkwww.ondd.be.

About Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking
At the core of Societe Generale's universal banking business model, the Corporate & Investment Bank is a well-diversified and leading player with 12 000 professionals present in over 40 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

Standing by its clients across sectors, the Corporate & Investment Bank tailors solutions for them by capitalising on its worldwide expertise in investment banking,globalfinance, and global markets.

For Corporates, Financial Institutions and public sector: providing a global advisory approach (M&A, debt, equity transaction, capital structure, and asset & liability management), as well as quality capital raising solutions across the debt and equity spectrum, optimised financing and expert risk management responses notably in the realm of foreign exchange and rates derivatives.

For investors: offering reliable and sound investment opportunities and risk management solutions through its integrated global markets platform delivering seamless access to markets (equity, rates, credit, currencies, commodities and derivatives), as well as advice and solid financial engineering, quality of execution and forward-looking research across asset classes

external linkwww.sgcib.com

SG CIB Global Finance division consolidates all capital raising across the debt to equity spectrum, structured financing and hedging solutions for issuers.
Where 110 experts in Export Finance deliver financing solutions, risk covers and advisory services related to import or export contracts of which underlying assets are capital goods, equipment and/or services.
Responsible for all ECA-backed business solutions for more than 40 years, our experts leverage their relationship with Export Credit Agencies and the emerging market to address client needs across the globe, capitalizing on the extensive Société Générale network.
A leading position reconfirmed by its clients with the prestigious Award for Excellence from Trade Finance Magazine. In Export Finance, Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking was named 'Best Export Finance Arranger' for the eighth consecutive year, demonstrating how, with its strong global network and innovative approach, the bank continues to address the evolving needs of its clients and provides support to win business overseas.

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 16.98 billion in 2008 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

— WebWireID107162 —

ROCHESTER, N.Y.— ITT (NYSE:ITT) announced today that Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan's largest satellite manufacturer, has selected ITT Space Systems to build the imaging systems for two geostationary satellites being built for the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The two geostationary satellites, named Himawari-8 and Himawari-9, will provide round-the-clock weather forecasts and severe weather alerts for the eastern Asia and Oceania.

The Himawari payloads will be based on the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) that ITT is currently building for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R-series, or GOES-R, for NOAA's next-generation geostationary constellation. This improved imager has the capability to monitor three times the amount of atmospheric conditions than current generation payloads, creating superior imagery data for severe weather analysis and forecast every 30 seconds.

"This is a key win for ITT Space Systems Division. It's our largest international contract to date; and when combined with the Advanced Baseline Imager work we're doing for NASA, firmly establishes ITT as the worldwide leader for design and development of this class of meteorological instrument," said Rob Mitrevski, vice president for Commercial and Space Science. "We're very proud of the fact that ITT meteorological payloads will help save lives and protect property around the world for many years to come."

The Himawari (Japanese for "sunflower") satellites, formally known as the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellite series, are part of the World Weather Watch project within the World Meteorological Organization. Himawari-8 is expected to launch in 2014, followed by Himawari-9 in 2016.

— WebWireID107126 —

REDMOND, Wash.— Building on the innovation described in the Dynamic Business vision recently discussed at Convergence 2009 Europe, Microsoft Corp. today introduced the November 2009 service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, the third service update delivered in 18 months. The service update offers new features at no additional cost to customers, including free mobile access, enhanced data import, customizable views and simplified pricing. Microsoft also announced that customers that switch from Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On Demand products can get Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online free for six months, in addition to their free 30-day trial.

'The new service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online demonstrates our commitment to simplify the customer experience, deliver rapid innovation and offer more value at a lower price,' said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 'Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online enables businesses to begin driving productivity and results in a matter of minutes.'

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service update brings the following:

* Fast online access. Organizations can get started with a trial or paid subscription to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in less than five minutes. Customers are able to access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service through a Microsoft Outlook interface, via a Web browser or from a wide range of mobile devices — all at no additional charge.

* Simple contact management. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides a single, unified view of customer information that helps sales people manage accounts and drive revenue. A new Get Started Pane delivers guidance, training and access to communities, and Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, allowing users of all skill levels to maximize their productivity. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online makes it easy to import data from other CRM applications.

* Better sales performance. Sales managers benefit from strong sales forecasting and their sales teams benefit from workflow capabilities that ensure that customer engagements happen quickly and consistently. A new home page dashboard provides real-time views into key metrics that help prioritize daily activities.

* Better economics. Microsoft has simplified and reduced its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online pricing for all customers. All Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offerings are now available at $44 per user per month, and include offline support, 200 custom entities, 200 workflows and 5 GB of storage.

In addition to its free 30-day trial, Microsoft is offering six months of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at no additional cost to existing customers of Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On Demand. This reinforces Microsoft's focus on delivering more value at a lower cost than competing CRM vendors, whether through on-premises or on-demand CRM deployments. Eligibility requirements and other details of this offer can be found at http://offers.crmchoice.com/moreforless.

'Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a perfect fit for our business,' said Laura Tantaros, sales operations specialist for Trion Group Inc. 'We were able to get started and train our employees very quickly, largely due to the Microsoft Outlook user interface, and adapt the service to our specific business needs easily.'

'We've built our business on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and we've helped more than 75 companies adopt the service in the past year,' said Steve Bowles, chief executive officer of Pelagic Solutions Inc. 'In our experience Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online simply delivered a lot more capabilities and value than other software as a service (SaaS)-based CRM systems, at a lower price.'

The new November 2009 service update will be available to all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers by Nov. 15, 2009. Businesses can get started today by signing up for a no-cost 30-day trial by subscribing at http://crm.dynamics.com.

— WebWireID107122 —

Today's announcement is building on an effort to encourage collaboration and drive innovation in the insurance industry. The adoption of standardized business processes and models will make it easier for insurers to work with agents, brokers and other data partners.

The overall contribution represents a significant contribution of intellectual property associated with IBM's insurance industry models. The donated models are from IBM's Insurance Application Architecture (IAA), the company's insurance business and IT architecture framework. IAA is continually developed by IBM in collaboration with 100 leading insurance companies around the world, and the IAA model has been licensed by more than 200 insurers worldwide. IAA Business Object/Data Model, coupled with the existing ACORD Information Model, will form the building blocks for the next version of the ACORD Information Model.

'Over the past year, ACORD with previous donations and member participation, created the initial Information Model in an effort to provide an industry-owned model. IBM's donation will allow ACORD to leverage IBM's 20 years of experience in building an insurance industry model to further develop the ACORD Information Model. The consolidation of the two models will be available to the industry participants for future innovation,' said John Kellington, Senior Vice President of ACORD.

IAA is part of IBM's Industry Models portfolio, a comprehensive family of data, process and service models that are widely used across industries. Going forward, IBM will continue to work closely with ACORD to align IBM's rich set of IAA models with ACORD's standards portfolio. In addition, implementation guides and supporting tools will be issued by ACORD to foster the adoption and expansion of the Framework.

'The synergy of IAA and ACORD working together to create full, robust, flexible insurance assets will aid the ACORD standards group to leverage an insurance industry blueprint with a full operational payload. In this case, both assets will be stronger for this collaboration," said Michael Daugherty, president of the independent IBM Industry Models User's Group (IMUG) and architect at Liberty Mutual Agency Markets Information Services. "IBM and ACORD show true thought leadership by combining the power of ACORD's existing Information Model and their insurance industry information exchange standards, with the depth, flexibility, and operational richness of the IAA Business Object/Data Model."

IBM's latest and largest IBM business-model donation will further enrich ACORD standards and help propel their use within the industry. The new models will accelerate the development and adoption of ACORD Framework, ACORD Messaging and ACORD eForms.

Leading insurers are on a journey to using information as a strategic asset. By creating an Information Agenda strategy and leveraging IAA and industry standards, they are setting the stage for enhanced business benefits. As a result, IBM and ACORD have worked closely together to promote industry standards and encourage collaborative, innovative solutions for insurers.

'The ACORD Framework models will give insurers a flexible set of industry developed assets to help accelerate the global adoption of key industry concepts,' said Mark Lewis, Global Insurance Industry General Manager at IBM. 'Collaboratively aligning market-leading products such as IBM's IAA with ACORD's Framework will increase the value IAA can deliver to the industry and is consistent with IBM's strategy of fostering open standards organizations to create growth and innovation.'

By aligning IAA with the ACORD Framework, IBM increases the ability to leverage ACORD and other open standards in IBM's WebSphere SOA Foundation and SOA insurance industry accelerators, offering insurers accelerated capabilities to implement ACORD standards and SOA. In addition, IBM Cognos BI, together with IBM DB2 pureXML, can further help companies extract key data from ACORD XML messages, integrate the information with existing relational data, and create compelling reports for business analysts and executives.

— WebWireID107110 —

SADA was one of the original Google Enterprise partners in Google Apps. Since becoming a Google Apps Enterprise Partner SADA has had the opportunity to assist in the implementation of Google Apps for both educational and enterprise organizations. SADA has become one of the nation's leading providers of Google Apps implementations since becoming a partner in 2006. Project requirements for several implementations required the creation of custom tools to meet the needs of the client. These custom tools included utilities for the provisioning of accounts, synchronization with a client's existing identity management solution, and others. SADA realized an opportunity was available to help VARs grow their Cloud-based practice, while reducing their costs.

"There are millions of Small or Mid-size Businesses (SMBs) in the country," says Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SADA Systems, Inc. He adds, "Our goal is to ensure that, for every SMB, there is a skilled VAR to help them deploy cloud-based solutions that save them money." SADA is accepting registrations from interested VARs now, and the CloudToolKit officially launches later this month. For more information, and to sign up visit www.cloudtoolkit.com

SADA Systems, Inc. is a privately held information technology consulting, outsourcing, and development firm founded in 2000. SADA works with its client base to develop innovative technology solutions to business challenges. SADA designs, delivers, deploys and supports a holistic, cutting-edge suite of best-of-breed technologies. This allows organizations to leverage Information Technology to achieve new levels of effectiveness, efficiency, and collaboration. SADA is headquartered in North Hollywood, CA, but participates in projects world-wide. For more information, visit http://www.sadasystems.com.

— WebWireID106902 —

DENVER, CO .- IBM (NYSE:IBM) today launched the IBM Cloud Academy, a global forum for educators, researchers and information technology (IT) personnel from the education industry to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skills and share best practices for reducing operating costs while improving quality and access to education.

IBM announced at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference that 17 educational institutions worldwide are the first to participate in the Cloud Academy. United States-based institutions include George Mason University; Georgia State University; Gwinnett County Public Schools; Marist College; New York University; North Carolina State University; Pike County Schools; The Executive Leadership Foundation's Technology Transfer Project – a collaborative effort for Historically Black Colleges and Universities; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. International institutions include Beijing University of Technology in China; Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), Qatar University (QU) and Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) in Qatar; Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon in France; Ozyegin University in Turkey; Nanyang Technical University in Singapore; and Victoria University in Australia.

"Cloud computing makes it easier for those in the education industry, including students, faculty and administrators, to gain immediate access to a wide range of new educational resources and research applications and tools," said Michael King, vice president, IBM Global Education Industry. "The IBM Cloud Academy will advance awareness and adoption of cloud computing, including best practices for education and research institutions.'

IBM Cloud Academy Advocates Collaboration and Innovation

The IBM Cloud Academy will enable these institutions and other participants to collaborate using an IBM-managed cloud, available via the Internet, lowering barriers to entry for the development and contribution of subject matter expertise. Through the Academy, members can create working groups on areas of interest to the education industry, 'jam' on new innovations for clouds in education-related areas with IBM developers, work jointly on technical projects across institutions, share research findings, and exchange new ideas for research. Participants are also encouraged to innovate to further advance cloud computing by preparing education-focused open source software for clouds, integrating cloud provisioning and de-provisioning services, validating content for compliance with accessibility standard, and leveraging IBM cloud offerings for teaching, learning, research and administration.

A vital aspect of the IBM Cloud Academy will be the development of new technologies and research methods. The IBM Cloud Academy gives participants the ability to work with elite researchers in IBM labs throughout the world, many of whom are working on cloud initiatives in education, to extend the boundaries of cloud computing in education.

IBM will also collaborate with participants of the IBM Cloud Academy on integrating cloud technologies into their campus and district infrastructures, including IBM's virtualized server and storage hardware, Tivoli Provisioning and Automation software for management of cloud environments, campus and student computer lab management with the Virtual Computing Laboratory project, and cloud integration services from IBM's global services organizations.

IBM's Cloud Academy leverages IBM's Academy of Technology, whose membership consists of IBM top technical leaders from around the world who are working in research, hardware and software development, manufacturing, and services.

Participants will have access to IBM's public cloud services, including LotusLive for administration collaboration, IBM Desktop Cloud Services, delivery services for Virtual Computing Labs, and Corporate Citizenship Education Projects, such as PowerUp, Forbidden City and TryScience.

One of the tools hosted by LotusLive is the online version of Innov8 2.0, IBM's flagship 'serious game,' which is integrated with BPM BlueWorks. Shown at EDUCAUSE, Innov8 2.0 is being used by more than 100 universities worldwide and features real-world business scenarios where the goals are to maximize profitability and customer satisfaction while minimizing carbon emissions. Challenges in the game include managing a supply chain, reducing congestion in a city, and optimizing call center queues.

IBM's Cloud Computing and Education Initiatives

The IBM Cloud Academy represents a continuation of the cloud computing projects that IBM has initiated over the past two years. These programs provide a forum for collaboration, research and innovation, as well as a showcase for the work and projects IBM has completed with the education industry. Some highlights include:

* In October of 2007, IBM and Google teamed up to help university students gain the skills needed to program cloud applications.
* The two companies have since joined forces with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to enable more students to participate in the IBM/Google Cloud Computing University Initiative through grants provided from NSF through its Cluster Exploratory (CLuE) program.
* IBM continues to work with universities and educational institutions worldwide, giving students access to cloud computing technologies to help them complete research projects that aid in the development of remote regions and socio-economic conditions all over the globe.

The charter members of the IBM Cloud Academy will work with IBM to define the final structure of the academy, which will open for general membership early in 2010.

— WebWireID107073 —

DULUTH, Ga. – NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR ) announced today that it has purchased the assets of Netkey, Inc., a market-leading provider of kiosk and digital signage software applications used by leading companies to deliver a growing range of multi-industry self-service applications such as gift registry, guided selling, endless aisle and human resources functions. Terms were not disclosed.

ABI Research predicts that companies will spend more than $1 billion globally on digital signage solutions next year, growing at an average of 20 percent per year for the next five years, while kiosk deployments will grow an average of 19 percent per year during the same period.

Netkey's enterprise software platform uses a proven scalable architecture that enables fast and flexible development of applications for kiosk and digital signage-based solutions. NCR will combine Netkey's software platform with its own technologies to provide a best-in-class enterprise solution, which includes software applications, one of the broadest hardware portfolios in the industry, and a suite of services. NCR will continue to provide multivendor hardware support with the Netkey solution.

Headquartered in East Haven, Conn., Netkey has over 75,000 kiosks and digital signs installed by more than 400 clients in the retail, finance, transportation, and government sectors. Many of these customers also use NCR 's kiosk, self-checkout or point-of-sale solutions.

'This acquisition makes perfect sense from a customer perspective,' said Jenny Hinsman, vice president of kiosk solutions for Pitney Bowes. 'We use Netkey's application on NCR 's hardware for our Mail & Go Shipping kiosk. We now have one point of contact and, more importantly, are dealing with one company that is now even better positioned to lead the advance and growth of the self-service industry.'

Netkey will provide NCR with a robust digital signage application that is built on the same platform as Netkey's kiosk applications, making NCR's solutions faster to deploy and easier to support.

'Consumers increasingly expect to interact with companies when and how they wish, and businesses are responding by offering their customers a seamless experience across the channel of their choice,' said Mike Webster, vice president and general manager for NCR 's retail line of business. 'This acquisition will enable NCR to help its customers across multiple industries with kiosk and digital signage solutions that deliver more effective transactions, promotions and information as part of a merged channel strategy.

'In doing so, NCR will take a best-in-class solution, combine it with best-in-class hardware and services, and deliver compelling competitive advantage, ultimately on a global basis. Our approach is an example of NCR executing its software-driven, hardware-enabled and services-led corporate strategy.'

— WebWireID107072 —

'The technology enhancement initiative supported by Teradata will enable HFG to invigorate its business and continue to solidify its reputation as a formidable player,' said Young Seok Seo, team leader, Hana Synergy Box Team, Hana Financial Group. 'The Teradata solution will help us to support better, faster decision making.'

'We are pleased that Hana Financial Group chose Teradata for their core FGDW project,' said Mr. Moon-Seok Yoon, president of Teradata Korea. 'We are committed to helping Hana Financial Group maximize its integrated data to achieve real business value.'

Data from across the institution has been integrated into the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance establishing a centralized repository. The Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance is a key member of Teradata's purpose-built platform family that enables companies of all sizes to use analytics to take advantage of opportunities, outpace their competition and achieve business results.

— WebWireID107067 —

MADRID .- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Telvent Global Services today announced they have entered into a multi-million euro agreement with Castilla y Leon Government to improve management of the province's healthcare centers. The transformation of Castilla y Leon's healthcare centers back office will allow for greater communication among primary care centers, specialized care centers, and emergency and central services allowing the healthcare system to run more efficiently, providing improved care for the local community.

IBM and Telvent Global Services will provide consultancy and information technology (IT) services to help Castilla y Leon transform and improve health center procurement, logistics and supply processes. Central purchasing activity and a unique products catalogue will be enhanced. As the transformation engine, a new technology system will be rolled out to all health centers. The new system will enhance aggregated procurement from the different centers, expanding integration with suppliers.

The system will be integrated with the IT systems of the Regional Health Management organization and the corporate systems of the Castilla y Leon government. The regional government of Castilla y Leon will be the first autonomous community in Spain to use this technology platform -- the latest of its kind geared specifically for the public sector.

The aim of the project is to lower costs for Castilla y Leon by streamlining operating procedures. Communication and information exchange between various centers will be more efficient, and the healthcare system will have greater control over supplies and resources, providing more accurate information to assist decision making. This means that employees will be able to devote more time and attention to tasks of greater added value.

The project demonstrates IBM's position as a benchmark technology firm for the healthcare sector. IBM is currently helping to overhaul other healthcare systems in Catalonia, Murcia, Aragon, Extremadura and Castilla y Leon.

IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care with fewer mistakes, predicts and prevents diseases, and empowers people to make better choices. This includes integrating data so doctors, patients and insurers can share information seamlessly and efficiently. IBM also helps clients apply advanced analytics to improve medical research, diagnosis and treatment in order to improve patient care and help reduce healthcare costs.

— WebWireID107063 —

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.– When a medical bill arrives in an Ohio resident's mailbox, its side effects usually include procrastination, confusion and concern. That's the conclusion of an Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) survey that asked Ohioans how they feel about healthcare finances.

The Healthcare in Ohio survey, found Ohioans confused about what they were being asked to pay and why they owed that amount. Fifty-five percent said they stumbled over the medical jargon and codes included in their healthcare paperwork. This confusion has led, in part, to a quarter of Ohioans letting at least one medical bill go 90 days past due or be sent to a collection agency in the past year.

The survey also shed light on the anxiety facing Ohio residents from Aberdeen to Zoarville trying to get a handle on their healthcare finances. Forty-three percent felt that healthcare costs had drastically increased in the past year, and nearly 70 percent expressed concern about their ability to manage medical bills for themselves and their families. As a result, three-quarters of respondents routinely put off opening their medical mail, which includes bills and explanation of benefits statements.

"Our findings in Ohio are a prime example of how medical bills stand apart in the family budget," said Peter Karpas, president and division general manager of Quicken Health Group. "No other payment seems to cause so much concern and angst. And because medical bill amounts can be significant and often arrive when people are stressed, this is the one bill that must be clear, understandable and easy to pay."

These challenges are driving development in consumer-oriented medical management tools, including two online tools from Intuit: Quicken Health Expense TrackerSM, which helps patients understand what they owe and why. It also provides guidance on what to do if something is wrong, and helps consumers conveniently pay online. A second tool, Quicken HealthSM Bill Pay, makes it easy for doctors to provide their patients with a more understandable medical bill that can be conveniently paid electronically – resulting in less confusion and faster payments. More than two-thirds of survey respondents said they would use a product that would help them understand their medical bill and the amount they're being asked to pay.

"There's a connection between the unfamiliar language, on one hand, and delinquent bills on the other, Karpas said.

"Additional research has shown that 40 percent of patients don't pay their medical bills, simply because they either don't understand what they're being asked to pay for or don't believe they are responsible for the amount due. As many as half of those bills are written off as unpaid debt and that can drive up healthcare costs for everyone," he added.

The Ohio study also found that people don't use technology to pay medical bills as frequently as they do to pay other debts. While Americans routinely pay many bills electronically, 68 percent of Ohio respondents still pay their medical bills by paper check—a source of higher processing costs for a sector that is trying to keep costs down.

Quicken Health's Ohio Healthcare survey was conducted from Sept. 22 – 29 by Decipher Research on behalf of Intuit's Quicken Health Group. It surveyed 1,000 adult Ohio residents who had visited a medical doctor in the past 24 months.
Additional Resources

* More Ohio survey findings can be found at www.quickenhealthohiosurvey.com
* For information on Quicken Health Expense Tracker, go to www.QuickenHealth.com
* Providers interested in learning more about Intuit Patient Payments should go to www.intuitpatientpayments.com
* Click here for the Quicken Health Group online press room.
* Follow the Quicken Health Group on Twitter at www.twitter.com/quickenhealth

— WebWireID107054 —

DALLAS.-IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of its Health Analytics Solution Center, part of a network of global centers addressing the growing demand for advanced analytics needed to help hospitals and medical staff improve decision-making and provide higher quality care.

The center will be hosted in the IBM Global Solution Center in Dallas and will employ more than 100 health analytics experts, technical architects and specialists, with access to hundreds more health industry experts from across IBM, including experts from IBM's Business Analytics and Optimization consulting organization and IBM Research.

It is the first center of its kind to address the need for advanced analytics across the health care industry, taking advantage of increased computing power to collect and analyze data streaming in from sensors, patient monitoring systems, medical instruments and handheld devices as well as the volumes of data generated by hospitals every hour. Such data can be used to bring a new level of intelligence to health care to help doctors, nurses and medical staffs tackle complex problems such as disease management, hospital quality improvement, patient population studies and performance reporting.

Analytics can also be a powerful tool for empowering patients to make more informed decisions about their own care or lifestyle. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and health insurance providers can use analytics to derive new intelligence from their data to help reduce risk, predict trends and improve patient satisfaction.

"Tapping into mountains of data within hospitals and clinics can provide powerful new insight into what's working and what isn't," said Dwight Carter, CIO of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council. "New analytics technology makes it possible to see important health trends and allow physicians and hospitals to design more effective treatments. As hospitals become more interconnected in the future, this will be an especially powerful tool for hospitals, physicians and patients alike."

Advanced analytics can help health care providers examine large volumes of data and provide deep analytics across multiple facilities, physicians and patient groups. For example, by de-identifying patient information and examining treatment plans and outcomes among thousands of diabetes patients across the region, analytics can be used to track which facilities have the most success in improving patient outcomes and identifying the unique drug combinations, modifications and care approaches that other providers should take to help make patients healthier.

This type of technology can also be used to better understand how patients use medical services and explore patterns of potentially unnecessary care and opportunities for improving patient safety or quality of care. In the IBM Health Analytics Center, a number of key innovations in health IT to help clients are available including the IBM Health Integration Framework, enterprise health analytics, health payer analytics, data integration, patient portals, remote patient monitoring, preventative care and Patient Centered Medical Home technologies.

IBM has worked with a number of leading hospitals such as Duke University Medical Center, Geisinger Health System, Mayo Clinic, New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of North Carolina to advance health analytics technology. The Dallas-based Health Analytics Solution Center brings together this depth of experience into one location for the first time.

"With all the dynamic changes occurring in health care and the availability of new data from more sources, deep analytics unlocks new possibilities for improving the way health care is delivered by reducing risk, saving lives and even helping reduce costs," said Rob Merkel, Global Industry Leader, Health Care, IBM Global Business Services. "This announcement is the result of more than a decade of leadership by IBM building out our expertise in advanced analytics through our services organization, software, IBM Research and a series of strategic acquisitions."

The IBM Health Analytics Center is part of business strategy recently detailed by IBM as the company expands its capabilities around business analytics. IBM is also opening six other analytics solution centers in Berlin, Beijing, Tokyo, New York City, London and Washington, D.C. As part of this initiative, IBM expects to retrain or hire as many as 4,000 new analytics consultants and professionals globally.

IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care with fewer mistakes, predicts and prevents diseases, and empowers people to make better choices. This includes integrating data so doctors, patients and insurers can share information seamlessly and efficiently. IBM also helps clients apply advanced analytics to improve medical research, diagnosis and treatment in order to improve patient care and help reduce healthcare costs.

— WebWireID107042 —

CALABASAS, Calif. – Eighty percent of Americans say their bank or credit union's online channel is the best place to manage their finances. But only 27 percent of Americans do that. And typically, they'll say that's because the banks and credit unions don't offer an easy-to-use solution. But things are beginning to change.

More than 400 financial institutions have turned to Digital Insight, the financial institutions division of Intuit Inc (Nasdaq: INTU), to help them provide a better online financial management experience over the past year. And, now even more banks and credit unions can do the same.

FinanceWorks, Digital Insight's online financial management solution, is now available to banks and credit unions that don't use Digital Insight's Internet banking platform.

"Consumers and businesses are looking for help, and financial institutions have an unprecedented opportunity to be the primary online destination that meets their needs," said Sasan Goodarzi, president of Digital Insight. "Broadening the availability of FinanceWorks will help more banks and credit unions provide the online financial management capabilities that can position them for growth."

Financial institutions offering FinanceWorks have already found that providing online financial management capabilities can deliver tangible business benefits to banks and credit unions. Data on early FinanceWorks users indicates they:

* Are up to four times more profitable than the average bank or credit union customer. They have twice as many accounts, nearly 30 percent higher loan balances, and tend to have higher incomes.
* Log in to online banking twice as often as active online banking users, and are more active online bill payers (61 percent vs. 41 percent of online bankers).
* Are so highly satisfied with the online financial management experience that 78 percent would recommend their financial institution based on the solution.

"Americans want to have greater control over their finances, and banking customers will look elsewhere for the tools they need if their financial institution doesn't offer easy-to-use online financial management tools," said Mark Schwanhausser, multichannel financial services analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research. "No one is in a better position than banks and credit unions to help customers securely monitor their finances, move their money – and become the customer's trusted financial advisor."

— WebWireID107038 —

Working together with An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, the organizations are collecting and analyzing large amounts of complex environmental data from Ireland's coastline and lakes on water quality, tides, weather forecasts and more. That information is then made easily available to the general public at an online portal, Splash. Currently live in Ireland with plans for global expansion, Splash has already benefited thousands of visitors from nearly 40 countries.

'Our collaboration with IBM and An Taisce is paving the way for smarter water quality management at our beaches and lakes,' said Dr. Mary Kelly, EPA Director General. 'It is a good example of how smart green technologies can be deployed to provide easily accessible and useful information to the public. The Splash portal is just the beginning of what we hope to accomplish.'

The system also enables more efficient reporting by local government authorities and state agencies. Prior to the Splash portal, public reports such as water samples and compliancy with standards were not available until the year after they were collected and created. With Splash, this information is available immediately, in map-based format, and adhering to the requirements of the European 2006 Bathing Water Directive. Ireland is the first of the 27 EU member states to implement this online smarter solution for beach water quality reporting.

'Though the total amount of water on the planet has never changed, the nature of the water has,' said Sharon Nunes, vice president, Big Green Innovations, IBM. 'Everything from where rain falls to the chemical makeup of the oceans is in flux, and it continues to change in real time. By providing near-real-time access to water conditions, we're enabling environmental agencies and citizens alike to make smarter decisions about everything from how to handle changes in water quality to where to plan their next vacation.'

— WebWireID107031 —

Cannes, France - As organisations begin to prepare for a return to business growth, many are finding themselves at a major crossroads at which they must decide whether to remain on their longstanding current path of performing IT activities or to go in a different direction, according to Gartner, Inc. Organisations that opt for the latter will have an opportunity to challenge all activities as they currently exist, choosing where to stay the course and where a different course of action makes sense.

'We are now within one of the rarest and most fleeting periods in business: nearing the bottom of a recession and before a return to growth,' said Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner fellow. 'We urge organisations to exploit this unusual opportunity to question the efficacy of their IT business practices and determine whether those practices warrant change. But they need to act now, by the time business growth returns, they will be far too busy, and it will simply be too late to change.'

Mr McGee presents his outlook for business and IT leaders to prepare for a return to business growth during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, being held here through 5 November. He reveals 11 IT-based activities that are prime candidates for organisations to review for potential overhaul and advises organisations to consider the extreme approach to each activity, then consider the less extreme options, before finally deciding how to proceed. These recommendations are based on the results of various research findings from hundreds of client interactions.

Decision 1 - How to Modernise IT Infrastructure vis-à-vis Cloud Computing?
Extreme recommendation: Fund infrastructure modernisation only after you decide upon a cloud computing strategy.
Gartner said that by explaining today's request for infrastructure and operations (I&O) modernisation funding within the context of cloud computing in the future, executives are less likely to feel that they are paying twice for modernisation when cloud computing is officially adopted.

Decision 2 – How to Significantly Improve Budgeting?
Extreme recommendation: Replace existing budget methodologies with zero-based budgeting principles where every project request cites: (1) project name; (2) business unit executive; (3) one-time project implementation cost (operating and capital expenditures); (4) recurring annual cost and (5) business executive's signature.

Decision 3 – How to Become the CEO of IT?
Extreme recommendation: Hire an IT CFO, formally teach contract negotiation techniques and establish signing and agency authority list for vendors.
For decades, organisations have empowered IT associates to negotiate multimillion-dollar hardware, software and service contracts, even though those associates have never been formally trained in doing so. Gartner has long recommended the hiring of an IT CFO, as well as better training for IT associates involved in contract negotiation and tighter controls to limit unauthorised purchases.

Decision 4 – What IT Information Should You Disclose to Executives?
Extreme recommendation: Implement the procurement department and accounting department challenges immediately.
Those presenting contracts to executives for signing need to ensure that they are being transparent and clear. For example, they should have no qualms about including the following disclaimer on contracts presented for executive sign-off: "Before you sign, please note: The prices, terms and conditions in this contract are not the result of a competitive bidding process." The executive being asked to sign the contract will then be in a position to decide whether to put his or her name on it, equipped with the knowledge that it has not undergone the rigour of a competitive bidding process, or a comparison of prices prevailing in the marketplace.

Decision 5 – When Should IT Practitioners Leave the IT Organisation?
Extreme recommendation: Announce when key IT staffers with CIO aspirations will leave IT.
Gartner research has found that new CIOs for global 2000 companies must have served as managers or executives of departments or divisions other than IT. IT managers must decide when to encourage aspiring CIOs to leave IT to foster the pursuit of career goals in the wider organisation.

Decision 6 – Should You Support Cost Savings or Business Growth?
Extreme recommendation: Resolve how to simultaneously support cost-cutting efforts and business expansion.
As globalisation levels continue to grow, solving how to simultaneously support positive and negative growth will become one of the most complex never ending IT organisational challenges of the next decade.

Decision 7 – Current CIOs - Which IT Organisation Structures Work Best?
Extreme recommendation: End Tier one, two and three (T-1-2-3) support modules.
Unless abandoned, T-1-2-3 structures will continue to undermine the success of delivering new projects by interrupting developers to solve outages occurring in deployed systems. Instead the automotive industry model should be considered whereby once a product is built by the 'factory', a separate group of people becomes responsible for maintenance.

Decision 8 – Should New CIOs Abandon Legacy IT Organisational Structures?
Extreme recommendation: Divest IT operations from IT.
CEOs want to employ new CIOs with extensive business and management backgrounds to help IT keep pace with the business. Before IT project workloads increase as business growth returns, new CIOs should decide whether traditional IT organisational structures can best exploit their business acumen.

Decision 9 – What Type of IT Innovation Will You Lead?
Extreme recommendation: Finalise what type of innovators your IT groups will be.
Leaders need to decide whether they want their IT people to be empowered to be able to unilaterally identify and recommend a business issue, and deliver an innovative IT solution to solve it.

Decision 10 – Where Should You Prioritise Your IT Group's New Innovation Goals?
Extreme recommendation: Inform executives where you will direct your IT group's innovation efforts.
CIOs wishing to target a vastly new and favourable impact on business during this period of preparing to return to growth should direct most new funding to the business cycle phases where IT has been and continues to be most silent.

Decision 11 – Can You Solve One Enterprise Information/IT 'Grand Challenge' by 2013?
Extreme recommendation: Resolve just one enterprise information/IT 'grand challenge'.
Gartner recommends that organisations direct R&D funding toward specifically improving or solving just one of the enterprise's 'grand challenges' in order to make maximum impact.

Follow Gartner
Follow news, photos and video coming from Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/Gartner?ref=ts. FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/gartner, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc using #Gartnersymp, on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/27772229@N07/ and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/gartnervideo.

About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

— WebWireID107018 —

CyberWatch is funded by a National Science Foundation grant and is a non-profit group tasked with advancing cyber education through activities such as curriculum development and the regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition for teams from local colleges.

"As government agencies and commercial firms call for a dramatic increase in the immediate need for cyber experts, the education of our future cyber professionals through this partnership is critical to our success," said Ron Knode, director of CSC's Global Security Solutions organization and member of the CyberWatch industry advisory board. "We're honored to support the center in its mission to improve the quality and increase awareness of information security and assurance in the education and business communities."

"Our programs have benefited greatly with the help of our advisory board members and CSC's advisory expertise has been with us from the beginning," said Dr. Robert J. Spear, director of the CyberWatch Center. "I am sure this increased level of commitment will yield measurable progress in the education of the nation's next generation of cyber experts. We're proud of the relationship that we've built with CSC and other members of the industry advisory board. This contribution to our Cyber Defense Competition is especially important for our progress and we look forward to further strengthening this relationship with CSC."

The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition showcases collegiate talent in cyber defense. The event is open to the public and will take place in the metropolitan Washington area March 12-14, 2010.

CSC's cyber expertise extends across the defense and intelligence agencies and commercial enterprises in banking, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications and energy. CSC protects the networks of some of the world's major global corporations.

— WebWireID106974 —

"In today's tough economic climate our channel partners need value-added services that will help them increase revenue, retain existing customers and deliver a competitive advantage. Avnet's service agreement with Kodak enables resellers to offer a fully rounded solution that will differentiate them from their competitors, increase the value of their sales and provide a stream of regular renewals revenue," explained Mark Hawkins, Head of Strategic Alliances, Document Management Technology, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA.

"As a services-focused organisation with a dedicated and award-winning global services and support infrastructure, Kodak will enable Avnet to provide a comprehensive, single-source service offering covering the majority of our major document scanning brands. Avnet's vendor neutral position remains unchanged. We have taken a great deal of care in the drafting of our agreement with Kodak to ensure that our business partnerships with our other document scanner manufacturers remain both protected and unaltered. Our sales team will remain focused on creating sales opportunities for document scanners regardless of the manufacturer," Hawkins continued.

Kodak also offers service capabilities across a wide range of products, not distributed by Avnet, within the IT sector, and Avnet's channel partners will now be able to extend their portfolio to include these additional services. The ability to deliver an increased choice of service support from Kodak adds increased value to Avnet's channel partners' offering.

"This is an exciting development for Kodak, as it strengthens our existing relationship with Avnet, one of Kodak's leading distributors in EAMER by giving our joint channel partners access to a broader range of Kodak services. Like Avnet, Kodak understands what the channel is trying to achieve, and our goal is to help partners get there faster. Post-sale services help our channel partners maximise their relationship with their most valuable asset, the end user," concluded David Brown, EAMER Business Services Director, Business Solutions and Services Group, Kodak.

— WebWireID106967 —

Abdul Aziz, chief executive officer, Ufone, said, 'Ufone is constantly striving to provide a very high quality of service and support to our customers across the country. We have invested in Teradata's technology to better understand our customers and gain insight into their needs to be able to respond with matching services and offerings at competitive prices.'

Since 2001 Ufone's analytical solutions from Teradata have provided a comprehensive platform for intelligently storing information and analyzing those information reserves. Ufone uses this information to re-invent its business to not only offer innovative services but also to continuously enhancing quality of services.

'Teradata is committed to delivering high performance Active Enterprise Data Warehouse solutions to its customers, the backbone of pervasive, operational and real-time business intelligence,' said Khuram Rahat, managing director, Teradata Pakistan. 'This enables them to carry out detailed analysis and to make strategic and timely tactical decisions that better serve their customers while achieving optimal efficiencies in their operations.'
About Pakistan Telecom Mobile Limited (Ufone)

PTML is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL) that started its operations in 2001 under the brand name Ufone. With PTCL's privatization, Ufone became a part of the Emirates Telecommunication Corporation Group in 2006.

Since its inception, Ufone has focused on the people of Pakistan, empowering them with the most relevant communication modes and services. This customer focus and best offering has allowed Ufone to build a subscriber base of over 20 million in less than a decade. Ufone has network coverage in 10,000 locations and across all major highways of Pakistan. Ufone currently caters for International Roaming to more than 260 live operators in more than 150 countries. Ufone also offers Pakistan's largest GPRS & BlackBerry Roaming coverage available with more than 150 Live Operators across 105 countries. More recently, Ufone has become a focused and intensive leader in VAS, constantly introducing innovative services, which have been the first of their kind in the Pakistani cellular industry.
About Teradata

Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world's largest company solely focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing, data warehouse appliances, consulting services and enterprise analytics. Teradata is in more than 60 countries and on the web at www.teradata.com

— WebWireID106956 —

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the availability of Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, a complete data and system backup and recovery solution for small businesses. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 automates the backup process of an entire system or individual files and folders without disrupting user productivity, and enables quick restores to the same or dissimilar hardware, virtual machines or remote locations. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 introduces new support of the latest Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 7, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, easing the transition to the new platforms and ensuring continued protection during migration. With the new release, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery will also support Linux operating systems later this year.

'Today's small businesses need the peace of mind that only comes with a cost-effective, reliable backup and recovery solution that will protect their information and systems to minimize downtime and avoid disaster,' said Pat Hanavan, vice president, Symantec Information Management Group. 'Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 provides small businesses with affordable protection so they can easily recover what they need, when they need it and to whatever physical or virtual environment they want.'

For small businesses, backup and recovery is both a challenge and a concern. According to a recent survey¹ of 1,650 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their customers, there is a large discrepancy between how SMBs perceive their disaster readiness and their actual level of preparedness. According to the survey, SMBs noted they were confident in their level of disaster preparedness (84 percent), but their practices reveal that this confidence is unwarranted.

The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. This is alarming as almost half report they do not yet have a plan to deal with such disruptions. While most companies deploy some form of backup, only one in five (23 percent) back up on a daily basis and 40 percent back up monthly or less. The survey also demonstrates small businesses that lose data due to disaster also lose sales and customers.

Backup Exec System Recovery provides small businesses with a single, easy-to-use solution for backup and recovery. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 now includes Symantec's patent-pending Granular Recovery Option, previously optional. This capability allows small businesses to back up an entire file server, desktop, laptop, virtual server or critical application server, such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint, and then restore granular items such as individual Exchange emails, SharePoint documents or individual files in minutes. Backups can be saved to a variety of disk storage devices and can be copied to an off-site location or secondary disk device for disaster recovery purposes.

In addition, Backup Exec System Recovery adds new support for the latest virtual environments, including VMware vSphere 4.0, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and Citrix XenServer 5.x. This new support ensures that the more technical small businesses that integrate virtualization into their IT environments can convert physical systems to virtual machines through Backup Exec System Recovery for disaster recovery or testing purposes.

Organizations can easily manage their backup environment at local and remote locations from a single, centralized console with Backup Exec System Recovery Management Solution, available with Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 at no additional charge. Channel partners can benefit from this feature as it provides them with complete remote control over their customers' backup environments through a VPN connection, allowing them to create, edit and distribute backup jobs, policies, installation packages, upgrade packages and client settings and enables remote recovery of volumes and/or complete systems. In addition, the Backup Exec System Recovery product line includes editions that backup and recover Microsoft Windows Servers, Microsoft Windows Small Business Servers as well as desktops and laptops.

Click to Tweet: @Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 provides backup and recovery for small businesses across Windows and Linux

Supporting Quotes

'Small businesses today have to do more with less and are looking for simple, affordable solutions like Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 to handle their IT backup and recovery needs,' said Gene Bumgardner, Director of Technical Services, OFM Computer Systems, Inc. 'Symantec's innovative approach to backup and recovery gives us the opportunity to help our small business customers protect and manage their information and systems while allowing us to grow our business and improve services revenue.'

'As a small business and an IT consulting company, we rely on Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery to protect and manage our information and systems, as well as our clients' systems,' said Andrew Chic, systems administrator, Prophet Business Group Ltd. 'We are confident that in the event of a disaster or outage, Symantec will recover our information or complete systems within minutes so there is no disruption to our business.'

Availability and Pricing

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 is available now for a suggested price of $795 USD per server and $69 USD per desktop. Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery Linux Edition is scheduled to be available later this year for a suggested price of $495 USD per server.

About Business Solutions from Symantec

Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

Note to Editors: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please visit the Symantec News Room at http://www.symantec.com/news. All prices noted are in U.S. dollars and are valid only in the United States.

Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Forward-looking Statements: Any forward-looking indication of plans for products is preliminary and all future release dates are tentative and are subject to change. Any future release of the product or planned modifications to product capability, functionality or feature are subject to ongoing evaluation by Symantec, and may or may not be implemented and should not be considered firm commitments by Symantec and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

¹ Applied Research, Small and Mid-Sized Disaster Preparedness Survey, Sept. 2009

— WebWireID106954 —

SAN JOSE, California - Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, today introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, an unprecedented collaboration of three information technology (IT) industry leaders. The coalition has been created to accelerate customers' ability to increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility, and lower IT, energy and real estate costs through pervasive data center virtualization and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.

Cisco, EMC and VMware have worked closely over the past year on a shared vision for the future of enterprise IT infrastructure – private cloud computing. A private cloud is a virtual IT infrastructure that is securely controlled and operated solely for one organization. It can be managed either by that organization or a third party, and it can exist on or off premises or in combination. Private cloud computing offers the controls and security of today's data center with the agility required for business innovation at substantially lower costs.

Worldwide spending on data center technology infrastructure and services exceeds $350 billion1 annually, according to McKinsey and Company estimates, with half of that spent on capital expenses (products) and half on operating expenses (services and labor). Further, an estimated 70 percent2 or more of those costs are expended to maintain existing infrastructures, leaving 30 percent or less for new technology initiatives and applications that can provide breakthrough differentiation for businesses. It is also estimated that approximately $85 billion3, or 20% of this total market, can be addressed with data center virtualization and private cloud technology by 2015.

The Virtual Computing Environment coalition offers organizations of all sizes an accelerated approach to data center transformation with dramatic efficiencies that promise significant reductions in both capital and operating expenses. As a result, organizations will no longer have to choose between best-of-breed technologies and end-to-end vendor accountability.

With the introduction of Vblock TM Infrastructure Packages, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition will provide customers with a fundamentally better approach to streamlining and optimizing IT strategies around private clouds. Vblock Infrastructure Packages are fully integrated, tested, validated, and ready-to-go/ready-to-grow infrastructure packages that combine best-in-class virtualization, networking, computing, storage, security, and management technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware with end-to-end vendor accountability.

The coalition will scale customer adoption of Vblock systems by enabling a global community of systems integrators, service providers, channel partners, and independent software vendors (ISVs). The coalition has also established unified presales, professional services and support capabilities to simplify customer engagement.

In unveiling the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, Cisco and EMC also introduced Acadia, a joint venture focused on accelerating customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures through an end-to-end enablement of service providers and large enterprise customers. Acadia's unique 'build, operate, transfer' model for delivering the Vblock architecture, addressing people, process and technology, will offer customers further choice, flexibility and cost advantages as they seek to virtualize their IT infrastructures and evolve to private cloud environments. In addition to Cisco and EMC as the lead investors, the build-out of Acadia's expanded capabilities in 2010 has also been capitalized by investments from VMware and Intel. Because the Vblock architecture relies heavily on Intel Xeon® processors and other Intel data center technology, Intel will join the Acadia effort as a minority investor to facilitate and accelerate customer adoption of the latest Intel technology for servers, storage, and networking.

ANNOUNCEMENT DETAILS:

1. First Offering: Vblock Infrastructure Packages

* The Virtual Computing Environment coalition today introduced Vblock Infrastructure Packages to accelerate the virtualization of IT infrastructures by minimizing risk, complexity and time to benefit.
* Vblock Infrastructure Packages are validated platforms of engineered, integrated IT infrastructure from Cisco, EMC and VMware, that deliver a breakthrough total cost of ownership and pervasive virtualization at a scale to meet today's most demanding use cases.
* Vblock Infrastructure Packages can be easily scaled with additional compute and storage capability after purchase, a key differentiator versus today's monolithic IT systems.
* Vblock Infrastructure Packages can be extended by complementary systems integrators, service providers, channel partners, and ISVs.
* Early customer trials of Vblock Infrastructure Packages have delivered up to 40 percent reductions in the cost of operating and managing virtualized data center infrastructures.
* The following family of Vblock Infrastructure Packages is being offered by the Virtual Computing Environment coalition:
o Vblock 2 is a high-end configuration supporting up to 3,000-6,000 virtual machines that is completely extensible to meet the most demanding IT needs of large enterprises and service providers. Designed for large-scale and 'green field' virtualization, Vblock 2 takes advantage of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and Multilayer Directional Switches (MDS), EMC's Symmetrix V-Max storage (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere platform.
o Vblock 1 is a mid-sized configuration supporting 800 up to 3,000 virtual machines to deliver a broad range of IT capabilities to organizations of all sizes. Designed for consolidation and optimization initiatives, Vblock 1 is comprised of a repeatable model leveraging Cisco's UCS, Nexus 1000v and MDS, EMC's CLARiiON storage (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere platform.
o Vblock 0 will be an entry-level configuration available in 2010, supporting 300 up to 800 virtual machines, for the first time bringing the benefits of private clouds within reach of medium-sized businesses, small data centers or organizations, and for test and development by channel partners, systems integrators, service providers, ISVs, and customers. Vblock 0 is also comprised of a repeatable model leveraging Cisco's UCS and Nexus 1000v, EMC's Unified Storage (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere platform.

Also today, EMC is introducing IonixTM Unified Infrastructure Manager as an integrated, unified element manager for Vblock. Unified management is a central factor in helping customers reduce operating expenses. As an element manager, Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is designed to support a wide range of enterprise management consoles.

A comprehensive security framework based on EMC RSA security products, including RSA enVision, has been validated with Vblock Infrastructure Packages. RSA security solutions are layered onto the Vblock architecture to deliver security policy management and security at three levels: identity, information and infrastructure. Vblock is designed to extend a customer's existing enterprise security controls to the virtual infrastructure and does not require the customer to replace security software already in place.

* Further Vblock Infrastructure Packages will be developed to serve business needs across three categories: shared services, applications and vertical industry solutions. For example, the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on Vblock solutions will enhance the provisioning, scale-out and back-end management of enterprise applications and users. To help ensure solutions are de-risked and highly secure, Vblocks will be ISO 27001 compliant.
* Vblock Infrastructure Packages are scheduled to be available this quarter direct from authorized systems integrators and channel partners. EMC, Cisco and VMware components can be purchased directly from the respective companies or their authorized partners.

2. Integrated Presales, Professional Services and Support

The Virtual Computing Environment coalition has committed to unify customer engagement with investments spanning dedicated pre-sales, professional services and single support experience to provide a seamless, end-to-end customer and partner experience.

* The Virtual Computing Environment coalition Solution Support Team is a cross-company presales team, fully trained in all elements of Vblock architecture and go-to-market resources to work with customers and partners and to facilitate engagements.
* Virtual Computing Environment coalition professional services, jointly developed and delivered, will help customers to understand how to maximize value and speed time to solution. These offers include: the Cloud-based Business Advisory Service, Private Cloud Strategic Impact Advisory Service, Private Cloud Architecture Impact Advisory Service, Virtual Desktop Advisory Service, Cloud Computing Strategy Service, and Vblock Design and Implementation Service.
* Virtual Computing Environment seamless support offers customers unmatched technical support and rapid problem resolution for virtualization and private cloud solutions. The coalition companies will leverage in-depth cross training and investments in joint problem re-creation labs as well as integrated processes and best practices with a single point of accountability.

3. Acadia Solutions Joint Venture and Investment

The Virtual Computing Environment coalition today also introduced Acadia — a Cisco and EMC solutions joint venture to build, operate, and transfer Vblock infrastructure to organizations that want to accelerate their journey to pervasive virtualization and private cloud computing while reducing their operating expenses. Acadia expects to begin customer operations in the first calendar quarter of calendar year 2010.

* Founded on a Vblock architecture that incorporates Cisco, EMC and VMware technologies, Acadia will train and help customers and an ecosystem of service providers and other partners to build, operate and transfer Vblock Infrastructure Packages to customers or their partner of choice.
* In addition to Cisco and EMC as the majority investors, the build-out of Acadia's global capabilities in 2010 also has been capitalized by investments from VMware and Intel.

'We have been pleased to contribute industry leading data center building blocks to server and storage solutions from EMC and Cisco. We look forward to extending these relationships by supporting their Virtual Computing Environment coalition in a similar fashion,' said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and General Manager of Intel's Data Center Group. 'Our investment in Acadia will provide a deployment option for customers looking to take advantage of Intel's latest data center innovations.'

4. Vblock Partner Ecosystem

The Virtual Computing Environment coalition has established a robust set of partners committed to the coalition. This includes representation from the entire partner ecosystem, including systems integrators, value added resellers, service providers, and independent software vendors. There are six system integrators at launch: Accenture, Capgemini, CSC, Lockheed Martin, Tata Consulting Services, and Wipro.

* The entire community of partners will augment, sell and deliver Vblock solutions to accelerate the journey to pervasive virtualization and private cloud for organizations of all sizes.
* The Vblock partner ecosystem will offer systems integrators and channel partners a business and technical solution on-ramp to private cloud infrastructures. Click here (Insert hyperlink) to read commentary from systems integrators and channel partners participating in this ecosystem.
* Vblock Infrastructure Packages support a broad range of operating systems and applications, enabling partners and customers to rapidly migrate existing applications to Vblock, accelerating broad-scale virtualization and time to results.

Read perspectives from Vblock Partner Ecosystem members here: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_110309.html

'Today's announcement addresses our customers' greatest challenges and opportunities in the data center.' said John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco. 'This coalition is about more than technology and partnership. It is about an entirely new and unique approach to the data center that improves utilization, power consumption and security of information, all in a way that lowers the total cost to the customer, not via a box, but with a network-based architectural approach for optimizing virtual resources.'

Joseph Tucci, EMC chairman and CEO, said 'Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, are coming together in an unprecedented way to help our customers. They need to be able to shift more of their IT budgets to the development and rapid implementation of new technologies that help their organizations create differentiated business advantages. Many of them understand the vast potential of the private cloud. With shared roadmaps and a long-term commitment, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition will bring true accountability, along with the best-of-breed technologies our respective customers have come to expect, to help enable their success.'

'Customers are increasingly looking to virtualization to dramatically improve the performance and flexibility of their existing IT systems,' said Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware. 'Today's announcement provides a compelling vision and set of roadmaps valuable to any company looking to harness cloud computing in a fundamentally more pragmatic and nondisruptive way.'

Watch John Chambers, Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz discuss the Virtual Computing Environment coalition here.

Customer Quote
'Purdue is a research university and the majority of our IT needs are spent on high-performance computing, which requires strong computing, massive amounts of storage, and high-speed networking fabric,' said Steven Tally, CTO of Purdue University. 'The Vblock solution offers these elements in a single pre-tested, pre-integrated solution which will be easier to deploy. VMware, Cisco, and EMC are ideal partners to respond to this problem because they offer complementary tool sets and have a history of delivering good products in the market space. When these solutions are tied together in a coherent and systematic way, it is very good news for an environment like Purdue.'

Watch Purdue's Steven Tally discuss the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition here: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/videos/purdue_110209.html

News Webcast

John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco, Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC Corp, and Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware will discuss the new Virtual Computing Environment coalition and how it will help organizations simplify and accelerate pervasive virtualization and the transition to private cloud infrastructures.

When: Nov. 3, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. PST/ 11.30 a.m. EST
Where: http://event.ciscowebseminars.com/clients/cisco/coalition

Twitter

EMC and Cisco will be taking questions from the Twitter community.
Please submit questions to @CiscoSystems ((hyperlink to www.twitter.com/ciscosystems)) or @EMCCorp. ((hyperlink to www.twitter.com/emccorp))

Additional Resources

Cisco
Landing page www.cisco.com/govce
Learn more about the Cisco Unified Computing System
Learn more about Cisco Data Center Services
Read "Cisco Data Center" blog
Follow Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior on Twitter.
Follow the Cisco Data Center team on Twitter.

EMC
Launch landing page www.emc.com/powerof3
Twitter www.twitter.com/emccorp
Facebook www.facebook.com/emccorp
YouTube www.youtube.com/user/emccorp
Chuck Hollis's Blog www.chucksblog.emc.com
IT Management 2.0 Blog www.itmanagement2.com
Chad Sakac's Blog www.virtualgeek.typepad.com

VMware
Launch landing page(s) = www.vmware.com/cisco and www.vmware.com/emc
Twitter = http://www.twitter.com/vmware
Facebook = http://www.facebook.com/pages/VMware/6975960973
YouTube = http://www.youtube.com/vmwaretv
VMware Blogs = http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/planet/vmware/
VMware vSphere Blog = http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere

About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information on Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) delivers solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere™ – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 150,000 customers and 22,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

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Note 1: Worldwide spending by businesses and other organizations on technology infrastructure and services exceeds $350 billion annually, according to McKinsey and Company estimates, with half of that spent on capital expenses (products) and half on operating expenses (services and labor).

Note 2: VMware Fortune 1000 Customers Study

Note 3: Based on Cisco internal estimates.

Trademarks
Cisco, the Cisco logo and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. DOCSIS is a registered trademark of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.

EMC, Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Ionix, and V-Max are either registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. RSA and RSA envision are registered trademarks of RSA Security Inc.

VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word 'partner' or 'partnership' does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

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