Orange Business Services (OBS) has launched the pilot of a managed videoconferencing service that connects companies regardless of the vendor of their equipment or the type of network they are using. Open Videopresence, which will be available on a monthly subscription, was unveiled at an event in Paris on Wednesday. The service can be used within and between companies, with meetings set up using an online portal or Microsoft Outlook. Orange can supply compatible equipment, although interoperability with other and older devices is part of the service.

Businesses need packaging equipment that are efficient and productive. With the help of carton sealers and case erectors, packing supplies will not be a problem. Carton sealers expert BestPack.com offers free support in refurbishing BestPack.com Tapeheads to aid establishments this month of June (PRWeb Jul 2, 2009) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2596044.htm

Melvyn Wray, CRN , Thursday 2 July 2009 at 15:51:00 Melvyn Wray discusses how to separate environmental facts from greenwash Products may often be installed with a working life expectancy of three to five years, so many network administrators must guess which functions will serve them best in the long term. This has led to a complicated trade-off between a cheaper product that meets today’s specifications and an over-specified, pricier product that should be future-proof. The finance department will often be left to choose, making a Return on Investment (ROI) call. New environmentally friendly ranges of networking equipment, developed for a more energy-conscious marketplace, make things trickier still. The hype surrounding energy efficiency means many manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon, leaving customers with a bewildering choice. If a network administrator is truly keen to save power, they should first recycle responsibly and choose a product manufactured using environmentally friendly materials. In fact, the most important issue for the network administrator when choosing greener networking solutions is its efficiency in use, because this can also save money. Determining the power efficiency of networking equipment is an essential part of figuring out how green a product may be. Power supply efficiency indicates how much energy is wasted when powering the electronic components of the networking equipment. Power supplies can vary in efficiency from between 40 per cent and 80 per cent, which is considerable. A highly efficient power supply can halve the total power needed by a switch. In addition, inefficiency generates heat, which in many cases must be extracted from a building or a server room using air conditioning. This further increases both CAPEX and OPEX costs and clearly is less environmentally friendly. Network administrators must verify power consumption by comparing this on the product’s datasheets against other products of its type. Environmentally friendly networking equipment should also include power saving functions. Green switches use a variety of mechanisms to save power and these must be scrutinised when picking the greenest product on the market. Such features include the ability to power down ports when they are not in use. This is an important item on the green checklist – many network administrators use 75 per cent of the total number of ports on a switch, withholding the remaining 25 per cent for future network expansion. If these ports cannot be put into a power down mode or disabled manually, they will consume power even when they are not connected. The length of the cabling is also a key specification for power saving, and switches that can detect cable length to drive less power through them. So if the physical configuration does not demand cables of 100m, products that support this could yield incremental power savings. Equipment that can switch off LEDs during a 24-hour cycle can also help cut power consumption, as often LEDs are not monitored so this can be an easy way to save power. In addition to power consumption and efficiency, green products should also be economical for the wide range of network loads they must support. Many power supplies are less efficient at low or full loads. Therefore, theor power saving features must operate efficiently from zero load, where there are no cables and there is full power saving functionality, to full load, where all ports are functional with 100m cables and all LEDs on. Datasheets must also be checked for power consumption at various load levels. The networking administrator must therefore ensure they have checked the maximum power consumption, which should ideally stand at around 75 per cent loading for normal business use and five per cent loading in overnight mode. If datasheets are examined carefully, a green networking product can be both effective and easy to use. Melvyn Wray is senior vice president of EMEA marketing at Allied Telesis

Ridley Scott's 2001 dramatisation of the Battle of Mogadishu is too black v white, but warfare has never been so strikingly depicted Director: Ridley Scott Entertainment grade: C History grade: C The Battle of Mogadishu, fought in Somalia's capital during October 1993, was at the time the biggest US military firefight since the Vietnam war. An attempt by American special forces to kidnap two chief aides of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid went disastrously wrong, triggering an all-out battle. Under the UN banner, American, Pakistani and Malaysian forces fought Aidid's militia. Exposition "This isn't Iraq, you know," says one officer. "Much more complicated than that." Maybe in 2001, when Black Hawk Down was released, you could just about get away with that line. In any case, the conflict in Somalia is indeed complicated. The film opens with a slew of explanatory title cards, revealing it expects its viewers to be a fairly dense bunch. One reads "Somalia, East Africa." As opposed to Somalia, Massachusetts? Violence Since M*A*S*H*, American military bases have tended to be portrayed on film as wild and sleazy places. Not so in Black Hawk Down, where the men use their downtime to play chess, illustrate children's books and debate the rules of Scrabble. One soldier's entire characterisation is that he insists on making proper cafetière coffee. Meanwhile, Staff Sergeant Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) holds forth about how profoundly he respects the Somali people. So does everyone else, apparently, and the troops' nickname for the locals – "skinnies" – is merely a sign of affection, rather than a tasteless slur in a country where 300,000 people have just died of starvation. "Bakara market is the wild west," announces one Ranger. "But be careful what you shoot at because people do live there. Hooah!" In the subsequent fighting, soldiers are shown carefully avoiding shooting at any women or children (two groups inevitably lumped together as helpless victims by the movie, which avoids dealing with Somalia's notoriously large number of child soldiers, and only once shows a woman with a gun). The audience can only conclude that, in real life, the several thousand civilian casualties must all have been hit by bullets ricocheting off genuine, kite-marked warlords. War Black Hawk Down doesn't hide the fact that the battle was the result of a perennial US military blindspot: underestimating the efficacy of guerrilla warfare. The runtime is almost entirely taken up by visceral battle sequences, in which hi-tech American equipment proves to be little use against determined street fighters. If there's a director who can make war look picturesque, it's Ridley Scott. Showers of sparks glow amid the ruins; market stalls are elegantly swagged with bandoliers; curls of smoke rise from spent bullet casings as they hit the ground; blood spurts forth in graceful fountains. American soldiers die in slow-motion, accompanied by mournful strings or piano music. Somalis just fly into the air, explode and disappear. Though actual data is hard to come by, the historian is pretty sure that it's not like this in real life. Politics The film was much criticised for pitting noble, civilising white heroes against faceless, savage black villains. It's true that special forces are less racially diverse than the US military overall, but it is still a bit conspicuous that Black Hawk Down chooses an entirely white cast of main characters from among them. It's also a bit conspicuous that the very few Somali speaking characters (mostly played by Brits of west African and Caribbean descent) don't do anything except scheme, gloat, menace and be untrustworthy. Meanwhile, the Pakistani and Malaysian soldiers who fought in the battle have been written out altogether. When American troops return to a Pakistani base after the operation, they are greeted by the film's only visible Asians: three beturbaned waiters, meekly offering glasses of water and fluffy white towels. So irritated was former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf at this slight that he denounced the movie in his autobiography – though, unfortunately, Hollywood was the least of his problems. Verdict Black Hawk Down tiptoes carefully around the facts when it deals with US troops, but its interpretation of history is flimsy, one-sided, and politically questionable. Ridley Scott Action and adventure Period and historical guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Doug Woodburn, CRN , Thursday 2 July 2009 at 12:53:00 One year after acquiring Packeteer, Blue Coat claims to have gained the trust of the vendor's ex-partners A year after closing its acquisition of Packeteer , Blue Coat claims it has accomplished its mission of winning over the WAN optimisation vendor's channel. Talking to CRN, Blue Coat's vice president of worldwide channel sales, Jim Harold, said the vendor transacted with 580 former Packeteer partners in its last quarter and that the attrition rate had been just 10 per cent. Following a massive cross-selling drive, some 40 per cent of the new recruits now sell both PacketShaper and Blue Coat's Proxy portfolio. "It took us two quarters to start gaining their trust," said Harold. "Early on, people were a little concerned about what we were going to do with PacketShaper. We articulated what we would do from a product standpoint and assured them PacketShaper would live on." Partners from both the Blue Coat and Packeteer sides have been offered extra margin points for selling the PacketShaper and Blue Coat Proxy portfolio together. Harold stressed that PacketShaper is integral to the vendor's application delivery network (ADN) vision, which it unveiled in February. While PacketShaper takes care of network visibility, Proxy covers application acceleration and security. Harold claimed the combination of these three components gives Blue Coat an edge over Cisco and Riverbed . "This helps our partners differentiate themselves," he said. "If they go in with PacketShaper, it is a consultative sale and they become more of a trusted advisor." A programme was recently launched offering free PacketShaper demo equipment to resellers that attend training sessions. Gary Middleton, business development manager at Dimension Data , said PacketShaper forms a key part of the integrator's WAN optimisation strategy. "Visibility is key," he said. "70 per cent of network managers do not have a clear view of what is running on their networks. PacketShaper is tremendously good at helping them do this." Global WAN optimisation sales fell by 14 per cent sequentially in the first quarter, according to Infonetics . But the technology fared better than other networking segments as suppliers could build a strong ROI case around deployments, the market-watcher said. The report showed that Blue Coat increased its share from 25 to 30 per cent, quarter on quarter. "This was due to our ADN strategy," said Harold. Six months ago, Blue Coat collapsed the Blue Coat and Packeteer partner programmes into one and Harold said: "It is the one-year anniversary of our acquisition of Packeteer and looking back we are pretty happy with where we are today."