These announcements are a continuation of EMC’s journey to the cloud.  In 2011, EMC announced the Velocity Service Provider program to jointly develop solutions and services with targeted, established service providers.  Those partners who successfully complete the Cloud Provider designation requirements will be included in the Velocity Service Provider Program.  Today, there are more than 160 EMC-powered services being delivered by over 50 EMC Velocity Service providers around the world.

At EMC’s first annual Global Partner Summit (GPS) at EMC World in Las Vegas this week, Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and EMC sales and channel leaders, presented to more than 3,000 partners these new programs and technologies, as well as other initiatives that enable EMC channel partners to transform IT, business and themselves in order to maximize their customers’ cloud computing opportunities.

The new practices announced include the EMC Velocity Solution Provider Practices – A new branded designation within the Velocity Solution Provider Program that recognizes advanced levels of capability.  Achievement of a Velocity Practice signifies a partner’s value in delivering leading-edge solutions.  It recognises high-value skills in pre-sales, sales and services, across a broad set of technology solutions needed to address customers’ strategic business initiatives.

The Cloud Builder Practice enables partners to successfully design, build and manage cloud infrastructures based on EMC technology. The Cloud Provider Practice enables Velocity Solution Provider partners with advanced capabilities to design, build and operate their own branded IT-as-a-Service cloud offerings based on EMC technology. The Cloud Builder Practice will be available starting in Q3 2012 and the Cloud Provider Practice will be available in Q4 2012. VMAX SP general availability is expected in 2013.

“Cloud computing represents a huge market opportunity for EMC’s partners. Our new Velocity Cloud Practices enable and support them in developing the expertise required to accelerate their clients’ journey to the cloud. Today’s announcement is another example of EMC’s commitment to advancing our partners’ skill set, sales opportunities, and differentiation in the market. We are 100% focused on delivering our Velocity partners the best technology and the most comprehensive and rewarding partner program in the industry,” said Gregg Ambulos, senior VP of global channel sales at EMC Corporation.

EMC also announced EMC Cooperative Services – a new service delivery model that gives partners an exclusive opportunity to supplement their existing skills and investments and broaden their portfolio of services. Available to service-enabled resellers who are part of the Velocity Solution Provider program and have achieved Velocity Specialty status. In this unique delivery mode, EMC Global Services provides service components to the partner to incorporate into a larger customer deliverable using proven EMC methodologies, best practices and analytical tools. Partners own the customer relationship and service engagement and can choose to brand the overall service as their own, further strengthening their role as trusted technology partners to their customers.

EMC Cooperative Services provides partners with greater choice and flexibility in high-value service delivery and are intended to drive profitable, strategic growth while reducing partners’ investment to scale capabilities. EMC Cooperative Services for health-checks and assessments on major EMC technology platforms will be available by the end of EMC’s second quarter. Additional EMC Cooperative Services for virtual infrastructure will be available in the second half of 2012.

CPI Technology’s Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok will be reporting live from the event floor through all days of EMC World 2012. Keep reading www.cnmeonline.com for updates.

“Huawei has been committed to LTE TDD commercial deployment worldwide,” said Deng Taihua, president LTE TDD & WiMAX &TDS wireless networks, Huawei.

“We will continuously invest in LTE TDD research and deployment as well as the global expansion of LTE TDD networks. We are excited to partner with Intel to accelerate the development of our technology and provide our customers with leading LTE TDD solutions,” Taihua added.

The collaboration will utilise Huawei´s expertise in LTE TDD network infrastructure technologies and Intel’s innovative and cost-optimised mobile communication platforms to expedite the maturity and deployment of LTE TDD. By connecting directly to Huawei’s infrastructure, Intel will carry out end-to-end testing of its mobile platforms in a real life environment.

“Collaborative innovation is Intel’s strategy in China. The engagement with Huawei will take advantage of the two companies’ strengths and leading technologies.” said W.K Tan, VP of Intel IAG & Head of MCG, China.

The partnership with Intel follows on the heels of Huawei showcasing the world’s first 4×4 MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) carrier aggregation solution for LTE TDD. The solution adopts leading 4×4 MIMO technologies and allows the peak data rate for a single end user to reach up to 520Mbps. Carrier aggregation and MIMO are leading technologies utilised to improve utilisation of spectrum and network capacity in order to provide subscribers with better mobile data experience.

After visiting the crazy place a couple of years ago with friends, I couldn’t get my head around why it was such a popular destination for conventions.

So when I was invited to report from Interop Las Vegas 2012, it was time for me to see just how practical working in the entertainment capital of the world is.

One thing’s for sure – they don’t make it easy for you. To even get to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, where the conference was held all week, I had to walk through the hotel’s massive casino.

Now I’m not big into casinos, but as the week went on – and my head was consumed more at more with talk of data centres, switches, networking and infrastructure – there’s something about the lights and sounds of Vegas that after a while begin to speak to you.

It doesn’t help that the old tricks of having no windows and – if you believe what they tell you – pumping extra oxygen in to keep people awake, lead you to eventually start believing you’re in some weird alternative world.

Add to that the fact that Mandalay Bay possesses what was voted the best swimming pool in Las Vegas, which you also conveniently have to walk past everyday to get to the conference, and that lure of temptation is complete.

With that in mind, it was to no surprise that a stand-out story of the week came from a gaming company. Only this was not a traditional Vegas-esque gaming firm, it was the social online gaming giant Zynga – otherwise known as the creators of FarmVille, CityVille and Words With Friends.

In the early days of Zynga, infrastructure was not an issue, said Allan Leinwand, CTO of infrastructure at the company. However, when FarmVille grew to 10 million day active players just six weeks after its launch in 2009, Zynga could not scale its infrastructure to meet the overwhelming demand. Fortunately, the public cloud was at hand for Zynga to leverage and prevent it from imploding.

Operating on the public cloud was easy for Zynga, and it served as a nice base to launch more games, including CityVille, which at the time was the fastest growing game on Facebook and as of February 2012 had over 46 million monthly active users.

However, at the end of 2012 Zynga decided it was time to do something very familiar to Vegas – roll the dice.

“We realised that we were renting what we could own. We wanted to own the base of our infrastructure. That base of our infrastructure would be the hidden gem and core component of our infrastructure plans,” Leinwand said.

So Zynga decided to build its own private cloud. Calling it the zCloud, Zynga built everything from scratch, including a new data centre, network, orchestration layer and servers. It then built it in multiple geographies, interconnected it with fibre, connected it up to its social network partners and then integrated all the workloads from the public cloud to its new private one.

In November 2011 Zynga launched CastleVille fully on zCloud and it became the fastest growing game in Zynga’s history, growing to five million day active players in just six days.

By launching it on the zCloud it saw a massive decline in data workload costs from the reduction of servers required compared to the public cloud.

After hearing this story I was convinced of two things. Firstly, Zynga’s gaming and cloud success shows that the digital and social world of today even makes Las Vegas look old fashioned.

And secondly, I can finally agree that technology conferences and Las Vegas do indeed go together – as proven by my ability to write this blog whilst lying on a sun lounger at the Mandalay Bay swimming pool.

Cisco said the findings of its IBSG Horizons Study of IT “underscore that BYOD is here to stay, and managers are now acknowledging the need for a more holistic approach – one that is scalable and addresses mobility, security, virtualisation and network policy management, in order to keep management costs in line while simultaneously providing optimal experiences where savings can be realised.”

The study also shows some of the quantifiable benefits and complexities associated with allowing employees to use their own mobile devices on their employers’ networks, the company added.

The study found most organisations are now enabling BYOD in the enterprise, with 95% of respondents saying their organisations permit employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace.

It also concluded that the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker is expected to reach 3.3 by 2014, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012. IT managers are balancing security and support concerns with the very real potential to reap significant cost and productivity benefits from the BYOD trend.

What’s more, the survey found that BYOD is just the gateway to greater business benefits. Over 76% of IT leaders surveyed categorised BYOD as somewhat or extremely positive for their companies, while seeing significant challenges for IT.

Key BYOD findings:

• 95% of organisations allow employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace.
  • 84% of respondents not only allow employee-owned devices, but also provide some level of support.
  • 36% of surveyed enterprises provide full support for employee-owned devices. In other words, they will provide support for any device (smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) the employee brings to the workplace.
• Mobility and device use are on the rise: 78% of U.S. white-collar employees use a mobile device for work purposes, and 65% of white-collar workers require mobile connectivity to do their jobs. By 2014, the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker will reach 3.3, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012.
  • On average, mobility initiatives will consume 20% of IT budgets in 2014, compared to 17% in 2012.
• Most IT leaders (76%) consider consumerisation “somewhat” or “extremely” positive for their companies.  
  • Among respondents, the top two perceived benefits of BYOD were improved employee productivity (more opportunities to collaborate) and greater job satisfaction.
• Employees want to work their way: Employees are turning to BYOD because they want more control of their work experience:Benefits of BYOD add up: The benefits of BYOD vary based on an employee’s role and work requirements. Cisco IBSG estimates that in the US for example, the annual benefits from BYOD range from $300 to $1,300 per employee, depending on the employee’s job role.
  • 40% of respondents cited “device choice” as employees’ top BYOD priority (the ability to use their favorite device anywhere).
  • Employees’ second BYOD priority is the desire to perform personal activities at work, and work activities during personal time.
  • Employees also want to bring their own applications to work: 69% of respondents said that unapproved applications — especially social networks, cloud-based email, and instant messaging — are somewhat to much more prevalent today than two years ago.
  • Employees are willing to invest to improve their work experience. According to Cisco IBSG, the typical Cisco employee who chooses to use his or her own devices at work pays, on average, a $600 premium to do so. 

• Security and IT support are the top BYOD challenges: Respondents cited security/privacy and IT support for multiple mobile platforms as the top challenges of BYOD.
• Device proliferation requires new policy, approach to control cost: According to Cisco IBSG analysis, only 14% of BYOD costs are hardware-related, highlighting the importance of choosing the right governance and support models to control these costs.

 Key desktop virtualisation findings:

• Companies recognise the value in desktop virtualisation: 98% of people surveyed were aware of desktop virtualisation. 68% of respondents agreed that a majority of knowledge worker roles are suitable for desktop virtualisation and 50% noted that their organisation is in the process of implementing a desktop virtualisation strategy.
• Desktop virtualisation benefits three key areas: (1) business continuity so that workers can access applications through multiple locations and devices even if, for example, a server goes down, (2) employee productivity, and (3) IT costs.
• Data protection is the number one concern: Ensuring that only the right people have access to sensitive company and customer data is a top priority.

The new division which will focus on various industry verticals such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M), cloud services, commerce, digital advertisement, advanced communications, digital entertainment, and video services aims to boost the group position in the digital eco-system and driving innovation and advanced services to the group customers across all areas of operation.

Al Shamsi joined Etisalat as a graduate trainee 19 years ago, over the course of which he has held various senior managerial positions within Etisalat UAE demonstrating “remarkable performance” as senior vice president of marketing – consumer in 2009. This role saw him take full responsibility for UAE marketing activities.

Prior to his most recent appointment, Al Shamsi held the position of senior vice president of technology strategy for Etisalat Group, where he held this position since joining the Group in 2010, leading the Group’s foray into the digital space and enabling Etisalat to cooperate with leading communications and internet service providers from around the world, the company said.

The appointment reflects Etisalat’s strategy to develop the skills of nationals in the UAE and across the region.

“Companies have largely begun their journey to the cloud—now it’s time to move the conversation to address the transformational effect cloud and big data are having on both IT and business. Beyond that, big data offers incredibly powerful potential to improve nearly every aspect of our world and lives. This year’s EMC World will present attendees with many of the insights and tools needed to transform themselves along the way, while capitalising on these massive opportunities,” said Jeremy Burton, chief marketing officer at EMC.

EMC World 2012 offers more than 500 breakout sessions, more than 100 hands-on labs and exhibits from 100 leading IT companies. The conference also features EMC’s first-ever BUZZ Talks program, which provides online, real-time access to EMC executives, employees, customers and partners while covering critical topics.

In parallel, EMC will also conduct its second annual Data Science Summit, which is designed as a forum for industry leaders to discuss how data science has changed our future, and the trends and challenges that will define its evolution. The summit will bring together more than 500 executives and practitioners from across business, academia and the public sector to explore how data scientists can optimize teams and strategies to realize the full potential of data science.

Momentum, the year’s most important content management conference, will host more than 1,000 attendees to discuss transformation of infrastructure, application and business in breakout sessions and hands-on labs. The CIO Summit will take place May 21-22. At this exclusive, invitation-only event hosted by Howard Elias, President and Chief Operating Officer, EMC Information Infrastructure and Cloud Services, and Sanjay Mirchandani, EMC CIO and COO, Global Centers of Excellence, CIOs from a variety of industries will hear from EMC executives and CIO peers discussing how cloud computing is transforming IT, how Big Data will transform business and how to ensure trust in the cloud while transforming their organisation to deliver IT as a service.

More than 3,000 alliance and channel partners will attend the EMC Global Partner Summit, May 20-22 at The Venetian. Partners will connect with EMC executives and go-to-market teams, and learn through strategic business and technical discussions how to capture market share and expand their businesses.

CNME’s Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok will be reporting live from the event floor through all days of EMC World 2012. Keep reading www.cnmeonline.com for updates.

Apple announced its environmentally friendly plans on its website, and revealed that its Maiden, North Carolina data centre will have 60 per cent of its power produced on site from renewable sources. The other 40 per cent will be purchased from local and regional renewable sources.

Greenpeace infiltrated Apple’s Cupertino campus this week, projecting messages from Twitter and Facebook users who are dismayed at Apple’s use of coal at the data centre that powers its iCloud sources.

“Apple’s announcement today is a great sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal. Apple’s doubling of its solar capacity and investment in local renewable energy are key steps to creating a cleaner iCloud,” said Greenpeace International Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook.

“Greenpeace will continue to campaign to push Apple – and other IT giants like Microsoft and Amazon – to clean the cloud until Apple has policies to ensure that as Apple’s North Carolina data centre and others continue to grow, they will grow using exclusively clean energy. To garuntee that, Apple must adopt a firm siting policy to prioritize renewable energy when it chooses locations for new data centres. Only then will customers have confidence that the iCloud will continue to get cleaner as it grows,” he added.

Apple is building the largest non-utility fuel cell installation in the US, and the nation’s largest private solar arrays, in order to provide the green energy, said the company.

Businessweek reports that CFO at Apple, Peter Oppenheimer, said in an interview: “We are leading the industry. All three of our data centres will be coal free, which is an industry first for anybody our size.”

Oppenheimer said that Apple’s plans have been in place since last year, and wouldn’t comment on whether the changes were made following Greenpeace’s recent protests.

In April 2011, Greenpeace slammed Apple’s Maiden data centre in its How Dirty is your Data report.

Recently, Greenpeace has protested across the globe. In April, the environmental organisation covered Apple’s Regent Street Store windows with its own poster to highlight Apple’s use of coal, and protested outside Apple’s Ireland HQ.

The most common type of hybrid processors combine a central processing unit (CPU) and a graphics processing unit (GPU). These processors are particularly suited to use in smartphones and tablets, which need to deliver high performance and HD graphics from within a compact form factor.

AMD and Intel have been developing hybrid processors to compete for PC market share since 2010, but a number of mobile processor vendors including NVidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have also started offering heterogeneous application-specific processors with a microprocessor core and integrated GPU.

Now that smartphone sales exceed PCs, and tablets are gaining popularity, the demand for hybrid processors is growing. IMS Research has identified 20 processor vendors that provide heterogeneous processing solutions on a single chip, and values the market at over $55 billion.

According to Tom Hackenberg, semiconductors research manager at IMS Research and author of the Comprehensive Processor Report, the need for hybrid processors will only become more urgent as semiconductor providers reach the physical limits of Moore’s Law.

“This hybridisation is getting even more competitive with an Intel Atom-based smartphone on the market this month, demonstrating that Intel is serious about entering the mobile device market by combining an x86 microprocessor, graphics licensed from NVidia and configurable security logic as a hybrid processor triple play to capture share,” he said.

Hackenberg said that the extremely high volume of single chip microcontrollers (such as smart cards) means that hybrid solutions are unlikely to overtake single core solutions in volume any time soon. However, higher performance device demands will continue to push the market further toward hybrid processors.

Meanwhile, some chip vendors are turning their attention to configurable processors that can deliver application-specific cores. For example, Intel’s Z2460 mobile processor includes a configurable security engine, and Analog Devices’ BF60x DSP includes configurable logic to accelerate vision applications.

“If processor suppliers are going to continue meeting performance expectations set by Moore’s Law, clearly this is a necessary trend. Future processors may be less marketable by their top-end frequency and more by their application specific cores,” said Hackenberg.

The platform was originally launched on 1st July 2011 from NYSE Euronext’s US Liquidity Centre in New Jersey, which houses the New York Stock Exchange, but will now also operate from NYSE’s European Liquidity Centre in Basildon, UK.

NYSE Technologies has said that the platform is designed to increase business agility, simplify market access and reduce trading friction by tapping into the benefits of on-demand computing resources.

The platform will be delivered over NYSE’s Secure Financial Transactions Infrastructure network and provide customers from around the world access to the exchange’s regional markets in Europe and the US, all via the cloud.

NYSE partnered with EMC and VMware to implement the platform in the US and Europe.

Dominique Cerutti, president and deputy chief executive officer at NYSE Euronext, said that the Capital Markets Community Platform would allow customers to drive efficiencies at a “critical time”.

GF Futures’ Asian broker arm, based in Hong Kong, has been beta testing the platform.

“The global nature of the Community Platform, with its sophisticated and secure IT infrastructure, reflects the worldwide nature of the capital markets and provides choice and freedom for organisations like our own to operate and trade efficiently and competitively in a global marketplace,” said Dr Xiao Cheng, general manager of GF Futures.

Computerworld UK spoke to NYSE Euronext’s managing director of European colocation, Tariq Rashid, last month, who had hinted at the launch of the cloud platform. Rashid also explained how NYSE is heavily investing in broadening the scope of its European datacentre in Basildon, by adding additional exchanges and allowing smaller, more varied capital market firms to gain access.

“Originally many people saw colocation as the preserve of larger firms that were able to make a big investment in the required technology infrastructure, but now we have set up the space and have policies that allow smaller companies to take part,” said Rashid.

“We allow all capital market participants into colocation and allow them to start with smaller colocation footprints, such as half a rack, if that’s all they need,” he added.

The companies announced last August that they had entered into an agreement for Google to acquire mobile phone and tablet maker Motorola Mobility for about US$12.5 billion.

“We are pleased that the deal has received approval in all jurisdictions,” Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said Saturday. “We expect to close early next week.”

A Google spokeswoman confirmed the deal was approved early Saturday and that it should close within the week.

Motorola Mobility ships phones and tablets with Google’s Android operating system. The close of the deal means that Google has a hardware manufacturing arm with which it can closely work to develop Android.

Google will also have control of Motorola’s massive patent portfolio. Motorola Mobility has said that it owns or has applied for more than 24,000 patents.

The deal has already been approved by antitrust authorities in the U.S. and Europe. Chinese authorities have approved the deal on condition that Google keep Android free and available to other mobile device manufacturers for five years, according to a source close to the deal.

Other conditions include a commitment by Google to meet obligations to license patents for industry standard technology on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminator) terms, according to the source. FRAND terms typically involve licensing obligations required by standards-setting bodies for members that get involved in the standard-setting process, and for companies whose technology is approved as part of industry standards.

The conditions set by the Chinese are similar to those involved in the approval process in Europe and the U.S., according to the source.

Motorola Mobility’s manufacturing might and vast array of patents will be crucial in Google’s battle for dominance in the smartphone and tablet market as it competes with Apple. Google will also compete with Microsoft as Microsoft promotes new versions of Windows in the tablet and smartphone market.

An open question is whether mobile device manufacturers thatcurrently use Android will see Google as a competitor, and possibly be drawn to the Microsoft camp.

The first hours of the social networking company’s IPO got off to a shaky start on Friday with the share price wavering around the $40 mark, never gaining the astronomical momentum that had been anticipated by many. Shortly after 2 p.m. ET, the stock price was hovering just under $41, less than $3 above its initial share price.

“It’s certainly not flying to unprecedented levels. This underscores the thesis that many investors are taking a wait-and-see approach,” said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research.

He added that while many people may be surprised Facebook’s stock price hasn’t taken off yet, they really shouldn’t be.

“I think it’s surprising a lot of people, but I think it should have been expected. There are a lot of questions about Facebook…. How are they going to monetise mobile? Can [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg run a public company?” said Kerravala.

Twenty-eight year-old Zuckerberg started the day by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell from company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

After that, though, there were a few hitches.

Trading was supposed to start at 11 a.m. ET, but the Nasdaq delayed it by about half an hour in order to handle the flood of buy and sell orders that were coming through for Facebook’s stock.

Once trading actually began, the stock started out strong, trading at $42 per share, $4 above the official offering price of $38 the company set Thursday.

However, instead of rising from there, Facebook’s share price began to fizzle, and dropped to below $39 just 20 minutes after trading began. Once the price hit $38, about 10 to 15 minutes later, the company’s underwriters stepped in to bolster it and hold the price floor at $38, reported the Wall Street Journal.

TV commentators and online headlines began using words like “underperform” and “disappointing.”

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said people may be jumping the gun. He contends that Facebook’s stock price is hovering around where it started this morning because it was priced appropriately.

“I can say that if your IPO doesn’t go up or down very much, then you priced it right. At this point, it’s all about perception and expectation. The stock price is just a noise meter,” he added.

Regardless of the ups and downs the stock is going through today, there’s been a huge amount of interest and excitement around the event.

As trading began, people were standing around Times Square in New York City, staring up at giant screens showing Facebook’s stock numbers. At the same time, Twitter momentarily staggered under the crush of tweets about the IPO.

As noteworthy as this day has been for many in the financial and tech industry, it’s been a tough day for other social networking companies.

The Wall Street Journal reported soon after trading of Facebook’s stock began that LinkedIn’s stock price was down 2.6% and Groupon was down 6%. Pandora also was down, dropping 5%.

Zynga, though, might have fared the worst. The online gaming company’s share price toppled a full 13%, landing at $7.17, according to MarketWatch . Trading on that stock was halted, later reinstated, then halted for a second time.

In a bulletin issued this week, Oppenheimer stated that Juniper would use the Radware ADC technology to integrate it with its QFabric data centre switch architecture. Oppenheimer said it believed the deal to be worth $70 million to $100 million over three to five years.

“We believe Juniper has been looking for some time to build an eco-system around its data centre architecture, the QFabric, and Radware would offer a key building block with its ADC engine,” stated Oppenheimer analyst Ittai Kidron in his bulletin.

A request for comment from Juniper was not returned by posting time. Radware declined to comment.

According to the technology research company, 419.1 million mobile phones were sold in the world during the calendar quarter ending in March.