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Unisys Provides Up-to-Minute Scoring
Info for U.S. Open
You
may not have needed a computer to know the score when
crowd favorite Phil Mickelson three-putted the seventeenth
green for a back-breaking double bogey last Sunday
at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock, but if you did, Unisys
was there. Since 1980, the company has supplied scoring
systems for many of the world's top golf championships,
including the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.
This year was no exception.
..... "We've
been doing the Open for 20 years, but the way we do
it has changed," said David Fox, director of
Global Sports Marketing for Unisys, told 5 Minute
Briefing. "For the second year, we've had the
walking scorer with each group enter the scores as
they go on a wireless device, and that's improved
accuracy tremendously over the old method of the walking
scorer passing over the scores to a greenside reporter
who would relay them. The walking scorer is much more
closely involved in the golf, hence the accuracy goes
up."
.....
Put
simply, a major sporting event has all the information
technology (IT) demands of running a large business
or government agency - and then some. Action is measured
in split seconds. Moreover, results must be processed
instantly, accurately, and distributed immediately
- not only around the event site, but also to a worldwide
audience of fans. Add to this the intense pressure
of live TV with its voracious appetite for computer-generated
graphics plus statistical information for commentators.
"We've had a huge audience for this event, as
you can imagine, a huge entourage," Fox said.
"We had 900 journalists from 270 countries relying
on our technology, NBC, ESPN, Australia Channel 9,
TV ASAHI out of Japan, British Sky Sports, world feed,
just an incredible amount of pressure. But in the
four whole days of play, the scoring service performed
flawlessly." Not bad for a course in which the
average score on the final round was north of 80.
.....
To
see the final pdf, click
here.
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Jade
Launches Web Learning, Gives Award
To further improve the accessibility of JADE as a
powerful development environment, Jade has launched
JOLT, the JADE On Line Tutor - an Internet accessible
interactive tutorial system which teaches programmers
JADE in 19 modules.
..... Alistair Peat,
vice president sales and marketing, Jade Direct USA,
told 5 Minute Briefing in a private interview, "It's
only started up this past quarter, but we've been
developing it in-house for the last six to nine months.
We have students in the US, Australia and the UK,
and they range in age from high school students to
retirees. It's fully interactive, and the response
has just been fantastic."
..... The first fee-paying
student completed the course in less than a week.
Peat added that in less than 30 hours of focused,
guided study a person familiar in a programming language
such as Java or .NET could become proficient in JADE,
significantly enhancing their productivity by being
able to use the power of JADE to develop applications.
..... In another news
item, Jade presented a $2000 check to Christchurch
Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) ICT student
Cameron Lindsay for outstanding achievement in the
JADE technology. Assisting in the growth of the JADE
developer community, the Jade Higher Education Program
is comprised of over 30 universities and technology
institutions spread worldwide, and provides a comprehensive
course and technical support to enable providers to
deliver a quality program in JADE. More information
is at www.jadeworld.com.
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StorageTek
Extends Connectivity Options for T9940B Tape Drive
For customers needing to collect and store large
amounts of data quickly with high reliability, the
right connectivity option is critical. StorageTek's
T9940B tape drive can offer the highest transfer and
data rate regardless of mainframe or Open Systems
connectivity requirement, according to the Gartner
Group.
..... "This is a
great day for mainframe," Jerry Percell, product
marketing manager at StorageTek, told 5 Minute Briefing.
"We've been seeing a shift in interest to higher
capacity, and we have the'capacity centric' T9940B
tape drive."
..... The T9940B is equipped
with a native FICON interface for seamless connectivity
and high-performance tape storage in zOS (MVS) environments.
With the addition of the dual port FICON interface
to the currently available ESCON and Fibre Channel
interfaces, StorageTek continues to offer the ultimate
in data reliability during heavy-duty, 24 x 7 use.
The T9940B offers an unsurpassed solution for data-intensive
applications, such as backup, recovery, archiving,
and off-site storage.
..... "The mainframe
community has such good, solid standards that it's
easy to play well with everyone," Percell noted.
"We anticipate that many mainframe customers
will take advantage of the high capacity and throughput
of T9940B FICON to complement the fast-access capability
of the T9840C."
..... StorageTek now
delivers native FICON connectivity for both its 'fast
access' and 'capacity centric' tape drives. To help
protect their media investments, customers moving
from T9940A drives will have complete media compatibility
when utilizing the T9940B FICON. T9940B drives provide
backward read compatibility to data written by T9940A
drives and read/write compatibility with T9940B ESCON
and Fibre Channel drives.
..... StorageTek's T9940B
delivers 30 MB/second native data transfer (up to
216 GB/Hour, compressed on FICON) and 200GB(native)
cartridge capacity, while maintaining the customer's
existing investment in T9940 media. The T9940B also
features StorageTek's proprietary VolSafe advanced
WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) technology to support
today's stringent electronic data storage regulatory
requirements including the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission's "non-erasable and non-rewritable"
mandate.
..... For more information
on StorageTek's T-Series tape drives, click
here.
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World's
Largest Insurance Market Chooses Unisys
Lloyd's, the specialist insurance market, has
signed an infrastructure managed services (IMS) agreement
with Unisys, the global IT services company, with
a potential estimated value of $17 million to Unisys
over the five-year term of the contract. Unisys will
support around 1,400 desktops and 200 servers. Under
a separate contract, Lloyd's has purchased two Unisys
ES7000 servers plus infrastructure consolidation assessment
services.
..... "Unisys has
a large presence in retail banking in the UK, and
this is a continuation of that commitment," said
Tom McInnes, vice president and general manager, Global
Infrastructure Services at Unisys, told 5 Minute Briefing
in an exclusive interview. "The purchase of the
ES7000 servers happened in parallel with this agreement."
..... Located in the
UK, Lloyd's has a stated capacity to accept insurance
premiums of $26.6 billion in 2004. Most famously,
Lloyd's insured the QE2 Cruise Ship, as well as Betty
Grable's legs. Unisys will transform and manage Lloyd's
IT infrastructure to help make it transparent, secure
and flexible. This will enhance service delivery and
provide a consistent user experience for Lloyd's employees.
..... Employees will
receive IT support from the Unisys Managed Services
Centre located in Milton Keynes, UK. Unisys will also
deliver remote server management from the Unisys Managed
Services Centre located in Schiphol, The Netherlands.
Remote infrastructure managed services are a first
for Lloyd's and replace an existing "break/fix"
IT maintenance service contract.
..... Unisys service
delivery will be based on recognized industry best
practice standards, including IT Infrastructure Library
(ITIL) and the Unisys Partnership Value Model (PVM).
..... "Lloyd's
runs a partner system with a number of large companies,"
McInnes added. "If we do well, this gives us
the opportunity to service their other partners, a
huge opportunity. The referencibility in this is just
tremendous." More information is available at
www.unisys.com.
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Unisphere's
Spotlight-The Asysco Company
(In Unisphere's Spotlight, we highlight companies
using Unisys technology to meet their customers' needs.)
Formed more than 25 years ago in The Netherlands,
The Asysco Company is committed to bring existing
large and complex information systems to the modern,
open world and change these systems to potential strategic
benefits for their companies.
..... Their LION line
of products solves the riddle of how you continue
to get value from the huge investment in time and
money you have made in your current mainframe LINC/EAE
or COBOL applications, while at the same time getting
all the benefits available from Windows or UNIX Server
technology that can help business to greater profits.
..... LION offers a 100
percent compatible LINC/EAE or COBOL solution for
the open network platform: No recoding or rebuilding
of applications; Extremely fast implementation process;
No retraining of the developers; Freedom of choice
of hardware supplier; Modern enterprise SQL databases
combined with platform selection; Using freely available
PC technology for fresh modern solutions ; and Web
enabling facilities to provide Internet services.
..... LION Runtime is
the solution for re-platforming LINC/EAE or COBOL
applications on the mainframe to the open network
environment. LINC/EAE or COBOL applications are now
available on Windows GUI and Internet Browsers and
make use of open SQL Databases on the network. The
migration is 100 percent automated, within 24 hours
and without recoding. The results are 100 percent
compatible.
..... LION Developer
is the solution for developing stable, powerful and
reliable information systems for complex and large
organization. LION is a state of the art development
tool for the open network environment. This powerful
multi-tier environment delivers applications for Windows
clients and Internet browsers with identical functionality,
wherever they may be located.
..... The Asysco organization
supports solutions, migration, consultancy and training
for complex and large information systems. The solutions
of Asysco are put into day-to-day production, in a
wide variety of types of organizations worldwide including
Banks, Insurance companies, Local and Federal Governments
and Commercial organizations. More information is
available at www.asysco.com.
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