Consumer M2M, Seniors Protest Cell Phones, IBM, Propalms and Ratna Sagar

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Consumer M2M, Seniors Protest Cell Phones, IBM, Propalms and Ratna Sagar

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann's rock-solid "Live At St. Ann's Warehouse." Call me cynical, but if this is truly an all-live album, without any studio overdubs, then it's one of the greatest jobs an artist has done in improving the studio versions of her songs to the stage:
 
The Machine-to-Machine market is already at $50 billion, say analysts from Beecham Research, who foresee "strong growth prospects" ahead.
 
It's traditionally a B2B market, but the new report by Beecham predicts the coming of age of a growing consumer market for M2M products and services that will rapidly catch up to the traditional business. The report, titled "Consumer M2M: The Approaching Mass Market" forecasts over 100 million consumer M2M products being shipped within the next five years, mostly for cellular mobile networks.
 
"A fundamental change in the M2M arena is now under way," says Georg Steimel, lead author of the report, saying today the M2M market is dominated by individual products serving the needs of individual users: "In contrast, the developing consumer market requires integrated products that offer simplicity and one-stop-shop availability that is easily enabled. To get to this requires new business models."
 
According to Beecham Research, the M2M market is still small compared with the worldwide mobile handset business, with new network connections for mobile handsets slowing in many markets -- particularly in Europe and North America -- and those for M2M speeding up. "Mobile Operators need this business," says Robin Duke-Woolley, Founder and CEO of Beecham Research.
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Watch out, cell phone companies, gray power's coming after you.
 
"It's time for cell phone companies and their poor disclosures to U.S. seniors and other consumers to get the same kind of tough going-over that Congress just gave to credit cards," according to officials from The Seniors Coalition.
 
The Seniors Coalition commissioned a March 2-5, 2009 survey by Opinion Research Corporation of 1,595 Americans with cell phones, finding that while "two out of five Americans do not know what penalty they would pay if they canceled their cell phone service," 60 percent of consumers aged 65 or older don't know.
 
It was not disclosed whether the pollster asked them if they had the information off the top of their heads, or if they knew how to access the information should they ever feel like cancelling the service.
 
The Seniors Coalition National Spokesperson, "Grandma" Green, said in her estimation "this statistic clearly shows why millions of Americans pay more for their cell phone service than they need to: They worry about getting clobbered with a penalty if they change services... this is just simply unconscionable in terms of the treatment of U.S. seniors and other consumers."
 
The ORC survey also found that 54 percent of consumers say they use fewer minutes than they pay for every single month, and that 70 percent of Americans say they go under on their minutes every month or "nearly every month."
 
Terrible, just terrible, according to Grandma Green: "These wasted minutes add up into the millions of hours and dollars every month for American consumers. Too many cell phone plans are pegged to excessively high-minute levels, so the options consumers have for plans that actually meet their needs are limited."
 
She also criticized "unlimited" plans as "just a way, in some cases, of charging more and hiding the number of wasted minutes under an 'all you can eat' arrangement. Wasted minutes are money down the drain no matter how they are marketed."
 
Conceding that, okay, it might be consumers' responsibility to "have a good handle on how many cell phone minutes they use each month," she blasted the "gobbledygook bills provided by most cell phone companies" as making it difficult to do so, saying the industry's "agenda" is to "enrich themselves at the expense of befuddled consumers."
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IBM officials have announced new services and programs to "help more companies lower costs and reduce inefficiency" by migrating from Sun and HP servers to IBM's System z, particularly on the Linux platform.

 
The new Server Consolidation and Migration Services offering is billed as being able to "reduce the time and effort" in moving applications to an IBM mainframe infrastructure. IBM also announced a program -- z Rewards - offering financial incentives to lure customers to the services.

IBM's introduction of The Server Consolidation and Migration Services is another step along IBM's marriage to Linux on System z, as nearly 2,800 of the 5,000 unique applications available on the System z platform are Linux-based. Linux accounted for about half of the roughly 1,000 new or updated applications produced for the IBM mainframe in 2008, and over 40 percent of new System z customers last year installed Linux.

Under the new z Rewards program, companies that purchase or upgrade to a new qualifying z10 Enterprise Class or Business Class mainframe in order to consolidate competitive Sun and HP systems can earn points that can be redeemed for certain IBM migration services, Big Blue officials say. 

The new offerings are linked to IBM's expansion in September 2008 of its Migration Factory program for IBM Power Systems to System z, as that program provides clients considering a move to System z with services that aid in their evaluation process.
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Propalms has announced that they have received an order for Propalms TSE software from the publishing company Ratna Sagar Pvt Ltd., India, which is replacing their current Citrix deployment with Propalms TSE 6.0 after evaluating the performance of Citrix, Go-Global and Propalms TSE 6.0.
 
"Ratna Sagar chose to replace Citrix with Propalms TSE due to its simplicity, feature-rich functionality and cost effectiveness," says Goutam Sirker, Manager IT Infrastructure & Systems for Ratna Sagar Pvt Ltd.
 
Ratna Sagar, founded in 1982, publishes books for children "that will really constitute an ocean of gems," according to the publisher's officials: "They will represent exemplary standards of book publication. Each will embody the highest levels of teaching methodology, design and presentation and pedagogical effectiveness. These books will employ the most modern and proven approaches towards the shaping of young minds."
 
And that, my friends, is a corporate mission statement worth its salt.


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