NBA Selects SAP to Develop Unprecedented NBA.com Statistical Experience for Fans

Press release:

NBA Selects SAP to Develop Unprecedented NBA.com Statistical Experience for Fans

WALLDORF, Germany and NEW YORK - July 25, 2012 | SAP - Database Technology

SAP HANA® Platform to Power NBA Statistics on NBA.com;

NBA and SAP Also Announce Multiyear Marketing Partnership that Makes SAP the League’s Official Business Analytics Software Partner

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced that the league has selected the SAP HANA® platform to develop an unprecedented statistical experience for its fans on NBA.com. The real-time data platform will enable the league to bring virtually unlimited amounts of official NBA statistical information directly to fans’ fingertips on the league’s official website.

In addition, the NBA and SAP announced a new multiyear marketing partnership that will make SAP the Official Business Analytics Software Partner of the NBA. The partnership includes the Women’s National Basketball Association and the NBA Development League and will allow SAP to connect with the passionate fan bases of all three leagues. Along with the U.S, the partnership extends to several international markets, including Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India and Russia.

“We are constantly researching new and emerging technologies in an effort to provide our fans with new ways to connect with our game,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern. “SAP is a leader in providing innovative software solutions and an ideal partner to provide a dynamic and comprehensive statistical offering as fans interact with NBA basketball on a global basis.”

“SAP is honored to partner with the NBA, one of the world’s most respected sports organizations,” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP. “Through SAP HANA, fans will be able to experience the NBA as never before. This is a slam dunk for SAP, the NBA and the many fans who will now have access to unprecedented insight and analysis.”

The NBA statistics team will implement SAP HANA to run the league’s enhanced statistical offering on NBA.com, which previously was accessible only to NBA employees and select media members. NBA fans will be able to access large volumes of statistical information and analysis tools on the SAP HANA platform, which will enhance their overall experience.

Furthermore, the NBA has also selected SAP® BusinessObjects™ business intelligence (BI)solutions for advanced analysis with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer® software and SAP® Data Services software. By utilizing SAP HANA to power official NBA statistics on NBA.com, and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP Data Services to enhance data quality, the NBA will provide fans with access to an innovative and easy-to-use statistical platform for their desktop, tablet or mobile device. The project is scheduled to launch during the 2012-13 season.

NBA.com also will utilize market-leading BI software from SAP to provide unparalleled statistical analysis of the league’s entire history to fans. As the presenting partner of the statistics section of NBA.com, SAP software will give fans a user-friendly interface to access and analyze official league, team and player data in real time. SAP will also help fans searching for key statistics via their mobile devices as the presenting partner of the statistics section of the NBA Game Time mobile application.

Throughout the year SAP solutions will deliver real-time data across the NBA’s entire global operations, encompassing media, special events, mobility, social media, player and team statistics, technology and fan interactions.

Also as part of the marketing partnership, SAP will serve as an associate partner of NBA All-Star, the NBA Draft and the NBA Cares All-Star Day of Service. Additionally, SAP will be a partner of NBA China Games 2012, which includes two games between the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Clippers in Beijing (October 11) and Shanghai (October 14), and NBA Europe Live 2012 presented by BBVA™ game in Berlin between the Dallas Mavericks and Alba Berlin (October 6).

For additional information regarding SAP HANA and in-memory computing technology, visit theExperience SAP HANA page. For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom.

About the NBA
The NBA is a global sports and media business that features three professional sports leagues: the National Basketball Association, the Women’s National Basketball Association, and the NBA Development League. The league has established a major international presence, with offices in 15 markets worldwide, games and programming in 215 countries and territories in 47 languages, and NBA merchandise for sale in more than 125,000 stores in 100 countries on six continents. Current NBA rosters feature 78 international players from 39 countries and territories. The NBA’s digital assets include NBA TV, which is available in nearly 60 million U.S. homes, and NBA.com, which averages more than 35 million page views per day, more than half of which originate from outside of North America. The NBA is the No. 1 professional sports league on social media, with more than 240 million fans and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms. Through NBA Cares, the league and its teams and players have donated more than $190 million to charity, completed more than 1.9 million hours of hands-on community service, and created more than 700 places where kids and families can live, learn, or play.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 195,000 customers (includes customers from the acquisition of SuccessFactors) to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

VMware Announces VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0, Adds Support for Oracle to Enterprise Database as a Service Platform

VMware News Releases

VMware Announces VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0, Adds Support for Oracle to Enterprise Database as a Service Platform

Database-aware Virtualization on VMware vSphere, and Self-Service Lifecycle Management Reduce Database Costs and Accelerate Application Development

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 10, 2012 –VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced VMware® vFabricTM Data Director 2.0 with support for virtualization of Oracle databases on VMware vSphere®.vFabric Data Director 2.0 simplifies and automates database lifecycle management, allowing IT to deliver Database as a Service in order to increase developer agility while reducing total cost of ownership for databases.
 
“The journey to cloud computing is all about reducing complexity for developers and IT operations in order to be able to more effectively meet the demands of today’s application realities – faster development cycles, more data and higher expectations for IT responsiveness,” said Jerry Chen, vice president, Cloud and Application Services, VMware. “VMware vFabric™ Data Director leverages the benefits of virtualization at the database tier to reduce database complexity and cost through policy-based automation and a self-service management model.”

Today, enterprises and service providers are rapidly implementing self-service cloud platforms that enable IT to quickly provision virtual machines and other core infrastructure components. Now, users are looking for their IT providers to deliver similar benefits from the most critical software solutions, including databases. VMware vFabric Data Director’s database virtualization makes this possible while addressing some of the challenges customers face managing a growing, heterogeneous database infrastructure—long lead times for developers, overworked DBAs and excessive operational costs.

Self-Service Database Lifecycle Management
vFabric Data Director 2.0 automates deployment, management and governance of heterogeneous databases and enables IT to securely automate and delegate routine database management tasks, including provisioning, backup, cloning and patching. This means application teams can provision or refresh a database in minutes rather than days and IT can offer developers self-service database access while maintaining control and compliance through policy.

New and expanded capabilities in vFabric Data Director 2.0 include:

• Expanded database support – vFabric Data Director 2.0 now supports Oracle 10gR2, Oracle 11gR2 as well asvFabric Postgres 9.1 (a VMware optimized relational database based on PostgreSQL).
• Automated physical-to-virtual migration – To further simplify database virtualization, vFabric Data Director 2.0 now automates the process of migrating a physical database into a virtual environment. This enables enterprises to consolidate existing databases on VMware vSphere, achieving further cost savings and agility.
• Integration with cloud infrastructure and big data solutions – APIs for integration with other products such as vCloud® Director™, vFabric Application Director™,the Cloud Foundry™ open source project, EMC Data Domain, and Greenplum Chorus. Enterprises using these products can now leverage Data Director for database provisioning and management for an integrated experience.

"One of the primary obstacles to infrastructure migration, be it to virtualized environments or to the cloud, is the complexity and risk associated with the database," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. "Now, with support for Oracle as well as PostgreSQL, VMware is offering customers a more seamless transition of database assets."

vFabric Data Director is part of the VMware vFabric family of products which includes GemFire®, SQLFire and runtime products optimized for Spring, a Java development framework, plus a complete set of services to build, run and manage modern applications in distributed cloud environments.

Pricing and Availability
vFabric Data Director 2.0 is currently available and is licensed per VM of managed database at $750 per VM up to two vCPUs. For more information, please visit the product page.

Additional Resources

• Data Director product sheet
• Tune into a live Webcast on Thursday, July 26 at 9:00 AM PTto learn more about virtualizing Oracle databases with VMware vFabric Data Director
• Oracle Databases on VMware - Best Practices Guide
• Understanding Oracle Certification, Support and Licensing for VMware Environments
• VMware vCloud Director
• VMware vFabric Application Director
• Cloud Foundry

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

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

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SAP Becomes Fastest-Growing Vendor in Relational Database Management Systems Market

Press release:

SAP Becomes Fastest-Growing Vendor in Relational Database Management Systems Market

SAP NEWSBYTE - June 08, 2012 | SAP - Newsbyte

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced it is the fastest-growing among the top vendors in the relational database management systems (RDBMS) market, according to a new report1 from IDC.

In the "Worldwide Relational Database Management Systems 2011 Vendor Shares" report, IDC found that SAP gained the highest revenue growth rate in the market. SAP outperformed the worldwide RDBMS market growth rate of 15.1 percent and is the fastest growing among the top 10 RDBMS vendors by growing 44 percent from 2010-2011. With revenues of US$1,004 million, SAP is now ranked fourth in the RDBMS market from a market share perspective, bypassing Teradata from last year's market share report.

According to the IDC report1, "SAP's combination of SAP Sybase ASE, SAP Sybase IQ, SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere and SAP HANA revenue enabled SAP to secure fourth place, surpassing Teradata, largely because of the addition of [SAP] HANA to its RDBMS product portfolio."

The SAP HANA platform and solutions from Sybase, an SAP company, help organizations unlock the business value of "big data" by enabling them to access and deliver information up to 1,000,000 times faster than before. With these real-time insights, they can act quickly as new business scenarios unfold.

"SAP has grown at a rapid rate in the database market, and we remain committed to helping our customers better manage and get more out of their ever-growing data volumes," said Steve Lucas, executive vice president and general manager, Database & Technology, SAP. "We feel IDC's RDBMS market findings validate the strategy SAP has set forth to win in the database market. Our customers are opting time and time again to elect SAP as the better choice for database solutions. This is just the beginning for SAP in the database market."

Per IDC,1 "The [RDBMS] market includes multiuser DBMS that are primarily organized according to the relational paradigm and that use SQL as the foundational language for data definition and access. Also included are RDBMS that have been extended to support embedded tables or other nonrelational enhancements or to include extended attribute types (such as graphical, geospatial, and audio), object-oriented formalisms (such as data encapsulation) or direct support for XML data."

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

1IDC, Worldwide Relational Database Management Systems 2011 Vendor Shares, Doc #234894, May 2012

Accenture to Expand Scope and Capabilities of Innovation Centers to Develop New Solutions Based on SAP® Database Technology

May 14, 2012

Accenture to Expand Scope and Capabilities of Innovation Centers to Develop New Solutions Based on SAP® Database Technology

 

Becomes First SAP Partner to Make Significant Commitment and Investment in SAP HANA®

 

ORLANDO, Fla.; May 14, 2012 - Accenture (NYSE: ACN) is expanding the scope of its Innovation Centers for SAP® solutions to become the first global systems integrator (SI) to focus on accelerating the development and delivery of SAP’s real-time database solutions and services, the company announced today. The goal is to help clients rapidly leverage the new innovations in database technology that SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) has delivered with the introduction of the SAP HANA® platform. This move will enable organizations to capitalize on the strong potential that this fundamental shift in the role that the data layer presents for enterprise software solutions.

 

The announcement was made at the SAPPHIRE® NOW conference being held in Orlando, May 14 – 16, where Accenture is exhibiting in booth 2501.

 

"We’re ramping up the next phase of research and development in our Innovation Centers because we believe the new in-memory technology featured in SAP HANA can drive significant benefits for our clients," said Mark Willford, global managing director of SAP business for Accenture. "The rapid, easy and timely consumption of data represents a new frontier for unlocking the value of business applications and is key to the creation of new competitive advantage. With the tremendous performance and speed of SAP HANA, clients can take advantage of in-memory computing in a way that allows for real-time business modeling and hyperfast analytics processing across virtually any volume of structured and unstructured customer data. We’re pleased to be the first global SI to make a significant commitment to build on the new platform.”

 

As part of its commitment, Accenture will make a significant investment in creating a workforce of up to 1,000 professionals skilled in SAP database and technology solutions by the end of 2012 and a dedicated research and development (R&D) capability. Through this, it will not only develop new applications for the SAP database platform, but also offer a set of new tools and best practices developed specifically for this domain. Furthermore, Accenture plans to use its Innovation Centers as a solution and delivery channel for its clients and create a solution factory via its India locations.

 

"Accenture is one of our most important alliance partners and a top provider of SAP solutions, so we welcome the substantial investment they are making to build out a dedicated workforce in support of SAP database solutions," said Steve Lucas, executive vice president and global lead, Database and Technology, SAP. "Our customers tell us they plan to continue adopting solutions like SAP HANA. Given that Accenture has been investing with us from day one, we believe this announcement is great validation of our strategic direction for SAP HANA. Accenture's industry leadership, expertise and delivery capabilities make it the ideal partner to help drive the development and adoption of new solutions and business applications based on SAP’s real-time database platform.”

 

Together, Accenture and SAP intend to create a portfolio of client offerings to significantly improve performance of and investments in the lifecycle of data-layer implementations. The first solution culminating from this new investment is a real-time customer analytics solution based on the combination of Accenture’s Customer Insight (ACI) solution running on the SAP HANA platform with predictive analytics.

 

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 246,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.  Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.  The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011.  Its home page is www.accenture.com.

                                                                       

SAP, SAP HANA, SAPPHIRE and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.  All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Former Silicon Valley Engineer Convicted of Stealing Trade Secrets

Former Silicon Valley Engineer Convicted of Stealing Trade Secrets 
Suibin Zhang Downloaded, Copied Trade Secrets from Marvell Semiconductor Inc.’s Secure Database

U.S. Attorney’s OfficeMay 09, 2012

Northern District of California(415) 436-7200

SAN JOSE, CA—A federal judge convicted a former Silicon Valley engineer of five counts of theft of trade secrets, United States Attorney Melinda Haag announced.

Suibin Zhang was found guilty Monday of three counts of theft and copying of trade secrets for downloading the trade secrets from a secure database, one count of duplication of trade secrets for loading those trade secrets onto a laptop provided by his new employer, and one count of possession of stolen trade secrets. The defendant was acquitted of three counts of computer fraud and one count of unauthorized transmission of a trade secret. The guilty verdict followed a more than two-week bench trial before United States District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte, which began October 24, 2011 and concluded November 9, 2011.

“The protection of intellectual property rights is of vital importance to the economic security of our region,” United States Attorney Melinda Haag said. “The investigation and prosecution of thefts of trade secrets remain a significant priority for this office.”

Evidence at trial showed that Zhang, 43, of Belmont, California, was employed as a project engineer at Netgear Inc., of San Jose, and had access to the secure database of Marvell Semiconductor Inc. by virtue of his position at Netgear. The evidence further showed that on March 8, 2005, Zhang had accepted a position at Marvell’s chief competitor, Broadcom Corporation, and that, beginning on March 9, 2005, and continuing to March 18, 2005, Zhang used his Netgear account to download and steal trade secret information found in dozens of documents, data sheets, hardware specifications, design guides, functional specifications, application notes, board designs, and other confidential and proprietary items from Marvell. The defendant then loaded the Marvell trade secrets onto a laptop issued by his new employer, Broadcom, on April 27, 2005 and was in possession of those stolen trade secrets on June 24, 2005 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed search warrants at his home and at Broadcom.

The sentencing of Zhang is scheduled for 9 a.m. on August 27, 2012 before Judge Whyte in San Jose. The maximum statutory penalty for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1832 is 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution if the court deems appropriate. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553. Zhang has been released by the court on $500,000 bond.

Matt Parrella and Dave Callaway are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Legal Tech Nina Burney-Williams. The conviction is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both Marvell Semiconductor Inc. and Netgear Inc. cooperated fully with the FBI in the investigation.

Press Release : April 26, 2012

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HP Unveils Enhancements to HP-UX for HP Integrity Systems

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PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today made available enhancements to HP-UX designed to enable clients to increase the server efficiency and availability of the most demanding applications for critical business processes.

The new HP-UX 11i v3 capabilities include enhancements to HP Serviceguard and HP virtualization solutions, enabling clients to:

• Ensure availability of critical applications with a wider range of storage and databases, includingHP LeftHand P4000 storage, Sybase ASE 15.7 and Enterprise DB, using failover protection from HP Serviceguard solutions.
• Boost server efficiency using HP-UX Virtual Partitions (vPars) software, which allows clients to virtualize mission-critical workloads. Originally available only for HP Superdome—the company’s flagship, high-end HP Integrity server—HP UX vPars is now available across the entire HP Integrity product line to help optimize server resources.
• Simplify management of virtualized workloads with a single graphical user interface now available for HP vPars and HP Integrity Virtual Machines 6.1.
• Optimize resources with increased input/output (I/O) performance for storage-intensive applications, utilizing HP-UX vPars software. By allowing applications to access up to 2,048 disks per virtual partition, HP-UX vPars software scales to support data-intensive workloads, such as business intelligence and data mining.⁽¹⁾
• Reduce the costs associated with I/O for HP Superdome 2 and HP Integrity server blades by more than 50 percent, with systems now optimized to share I/O cards across virtual partitions.

The ongoing development of HP-UX, combined with the HP suite of technology and service innovations for mission-critical computing, is crucial to the advancement of mission-critical x86 environments. As part of HP Project Odyssey—the company’s strategy to redefine the future of mission-critical computing— proven HP-UX high-availability and performance features will cascade to Linux and Microsoft Windows® operating systems. These advances will deliver investment protection to clients to extend mission-critical reliability, scalability and performance for future x86 workloads.

HP-UX and HP Integrity clients realize cost savings and application stabilityEnterprises continue to trust in HP Integrity and HP-UX to gain efficiencies, cost savings and stability for their critical applications.

For example, BayWa Group—a Munich-based company specializing in wholesale, research and service provision for the agriculture, building materials and energy sectors—selected an HP Converged Infrastructure to consolidate and standardize its SAP infrastructure.

The HP Superdome 2 environment enabled BayWa to simplify operational and service processes, increasing SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) performance values from 160,000 to 420,000.⁽²⁾ SAP application users realized a 20 percent improvement in response time and the overall costs of provisioning an SAP performance unit across the entire system was reduced more than 50 percent per unit.⁽¹⁾

HP’s premier client event, HP Discover, takes place June 4-7 in Las Vegas.

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(1) Estimates based on internal testing and industry data.
(2) SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) is a hardware-independent unit that describes the performance of a system configuration in the SAP environment.