New Rugged Platform from GE Allows FACE™ Developers to Minimize Cost, Risk and Time-to-Market

Press release:

31 July 2012

New Rugged Platform from GE Allows FACE™ Developers to Minimize Cost, Risk and Time-to-Market

 

• FACEREF1 is a complete, ready-to-run hardware platform
• Provides optimal support for Wind River Systems, Presagis software
• High performance, high Technology Reference Level

HUNTSVILLE, AL July 31, 2012 GE Intelligent Platforms (NYSE: GE) announced the FACEREF1 Software Reference Platform today at the FACE™ Consortium Meeting (PEO Aviation, Huntsville, AL). The FACEREF1 platform is designed to allow organizations developing FACE-compliant applications to take advantage of a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solution that is pre-configured, pre-validated and pre-tested – reducing risk, cost and time-to-market. It provides a platform for customers to try COTS software, develop application code, and demonstrate capabilities on a rugged platform that is capable of being deployed on real airborne platforms.

The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Consortium, an Open Group Managed Consortium, is leading the development of open standards for avionics systems. The Consortium is creating a technologically appropriate open FACE reference architecture, standards and business model that will ensure interoperability, increase portability, promote innovation and competition, bring advanced capabilities to the warfighter faster and lower implementation costs.

The FACE Consortium provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and the U.S. government to work together to develop and consolidate the open standards, best practices, guidance documents and business models necessary to achieve these results.

GE is working closely with Wind River Systems and Presagis to ensure that the two companies’ software roadmaps for FACE-compliant operating system, OpenGL and HMI tools work “out of the box” on the FACEREF1 hardware platform.

“A key objective of the FACE initiative is to create an environment in which advanced, yet proven, computing technologies can be deployed to the warfighter faster and at lower cost,” said Rod Rice, General Manager, Military & Aerospace Products, GE Intelligent Platforms. “The FACEREF1 platform allows these objectives to be met by taking advantage of an off-the-shelf, high performance solution that features a high Technology Reference Level (TRL), that is ready to run, and that eliminates the time, risk and cost that would be incurred by developers creating a solution in-house.“

GE’s FACEREF1 Software Reference Platform is a complete, rugged subsystem that features GE’s SBC312 single board computer and PMCCG1graphics PMC. The SBC312 is based on Freescale™’s Power Architecture™ P4080 8-core processor yet has the power envelope of previous dual core systems, while the PMCCG1 features the high performance/low power S3 2300E GPU (graphics processing unit). The interface between the CPU and GPU is via a 4-lane PCI Express® to PCI-X® bridge, allowing high-bandwidth connectivity between the two processors.

For more information: http://defense.ge-ip.com/products/3687.

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.

A high res image can be found at:www.genewscenter.com/ImageLibrary/detail.asp?MediaDetailsID=4901

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Press release:

Red Hat Training Supporting JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 Release With Multiple New Offerings

July 19, 2012

The Red Hat Training Team

Red Hat Training is pleased to announce the availability of a pair of new courses that have been substantially updated for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6. JBoss Application Administration I (JB248) and JBoss Enterprise Application Development (JB225) demonstrate best practices in the administration and development of applications on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.

JBoss Application Administration I teaches system administrators essential, real-world skills for effectively deploying and managing applications on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6. This course is ideal for those either new to JBoss or transitioning to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 from previous versions. This course is a replacement for the popular JBoss Enterprise Application Development (JB336) course. Key topics include:

• Configuration with the new Command Line Interface (CLI)
• Management with the new Admin Console
• Software deployment using a variety of available methods
• Provisioning and configuring Hosts and Servers using the new Domain model
• Clustering in both Standalone and Domain mode
• Details on the new configuration process, using a single XML file
• Migrating applications previously designed for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5 to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6
• Securing applications and defining security domains

In addition to a comprehensive JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 overview, JBoss Application Administration I helps prepare students for the JBoss Certified Application Administrator (JBCAA) exam (EX248). By passing the exam, an IT professional earns JBCAA certification for demonstrating the skills and knowledge to install, configure, monitor, manage and deploy applications to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.

JBoss Enterprise Application Development (JB225) uses lectures and extensive use-case, hands-on labs to teach mid-level Java™ developers to create, test and maintain Java EE-compliant applications the JBoss way. Students will learn multiple related technologies for designing, coding and testing secure multi-tier enterprise applications, including CDI, Arquillian, JBoss Hibernate®, RESTEasy and HornetQ. This course also teaches developers essential administration tasks, interfaces and deployment models. Some of the new and updated topics include:

• Developer administration tasks for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6
• Introduction to JBoss Developer Studio 5
• Contexts and dependency injection (CDI)
• Unit and integration testing with JUnit, Arquillian, and Selenium
• Developing session beans with EJB 3.1
• Developing entity beans with JPA 2.0 and Hibernate
• Developing RESTful and SOAP web services with JAX-WS and RESTEasy
• Developing asynchronous messaging applications with message driven beans using HornetQ
• Creating standard and rich web applications using JSF 2 and RichFaces
• Securing applications using the models provided by JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6

Learn more about JBoss Application Administration I, JBoss Certified Application Administrator and JBoss Enterprise Application Development.

PACSystems® RXi Platform Changes How Automation is Done

Press release:

17 July 2012

PACSystems® RXi Platform Changes How Automation is Done

 

• Next generation control platform designed for the needs of the Industrial Internet

• Integration of industry standard technologies, PROFINET and COM Express, to deliver ultimate flexibility and cost-effective upgrades for future control and cloud-based automation software environments

• Innovative rugged design in small form factor to enable factory floor computing, even in harsh environments

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — JULY 17, 2012—GE Intelligent Platforms (NYSE: GE) today announced the PACSystems® RXi, the company’s revolutionary new control and computing platform designed for the needs of the Industrial Internet. Based on leading-edge computing and network technology, and supported by an emerging ecosystem of cloud-based support tools, the RXi will help customers gain productivity benefits from machine-to-machine connections and the skill sets of a digital native workforce. The RXi platform builds on GE’s deep expertise in the design of embedded control platforms as well as industry-standard open architecture technologies that deliver what companies in today’s economy need –- improved performance, integration into the Industrial Internet, and greater uptime and low total cost of ownership (TCO).

To provide the performance sophisticated control applications need today, the core of the product family is a COM Express architecture with multi-core CPUs, which will allow GE to offer a range of products that will be continually refreshed without impacting the user’s application. The RXi platform offers a full complement of high speed interfaces, with multiple gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports. These high performance features are coupled with GE’s PACSystems control engine to deliver uncompromised performance and application flexibility.

The PACSystems RXi family of controllers has built-in redundant PROFINET interfaces, delivering high performance, high uptime control solutions. RXi Industrial PC (IPC) configurations are unique in the industry, able to run HMI, Historian and analytics applications right at the machine, even in harsh environments. This facilitates better real time control of operations and improved integration into plant-wide and enterprise systems. The RXi platform fully supports GE’s new cloud-based collaborative automation platform development and deployment paradigm.

“The RXi controller is the next evolution of PAC controllers,” said Steve Pavlosky, Product General Manager for GE Intelligent Platforms’ Control & Communication Systems. “The RXi platform is a key element in our strategy to deliver high performance control solutions that can be developed, deployed, and maintained with our new collaborative, cloud-based automation platform – delivering true integration with the Industrial Internet. The platform’s PROFINET-based distributed architecture offers the best combination of high performance control with distributed I/O for lower installation and maintenance costs coupled with redundant I/O networking for high reliability. The RXi runs the same high performance PACSystems control engine found in our RX7i and RX3i products, enabling seamless application portability between form factors. The RXi platform can also be used as a rugged industrial PC platform for the flexibility of an industrial PC for factory floor computing with the reliability of a PLC.”

From a design perspective, the RXi controller is a departure from traditional systems. First, it has no local I/O which creates the basis for future upgradeability. Second, it has built-in PROFINET with ring redundancy to provide a simple to use, low installation cost, high performance redundant I/O network. With open standard PROFINET as the I/O network, users are free to choose best of breed I/O and other devices, like drives and vision systems, for use in their systems. Third, the ability to deploy the RXi architecture using both control and IPC modules interconnected provides a compact, high performance solution for applications requiring visualization, data archiving, or other advanced computational tasks at the point of control. Fourth, since it is based on standard Intel® architecture, GE can deliver control solutions with unique capabilities such as very large memory sizes and on-board storage capability. Finally, the integrated Intelligent Display Module allows users to perform standard maintenance functions without the need for a separate computer running programming software and creates a bridge that integrates the control system with the Industrial Internet.

The platform’s Industrial PC (IPC) is very small form factor, and is rugged and fanless, for companies looking for factory floor computing. GE’s rugged COM Express modular CPU platform incorporates patented thermal monitoring technology with sophisticated passive cooling techniques for a high performance computing “fanless” industrial computing and control platform, eliminating susceptibility to failure which can result in thermal shutdown of other IPC systems that rely on fans for cooling.

The design includes connectors on the controller and IPC so that the two products can be mounted together for cableless communications for applications where both control and computing are desired. The IPC can also be mounted on the back of a series of touch screen displays creating a family of modular panel IPCs.

“This platform supports several trends in the industry including control sustainability, standards based open architectures, computing and control at the machine level, and integration into the Industrial Internet,” continued Pavlosky. “Customers expect their manufacturing assets to outlast the control system. This new way of developing a control platform allows them to maintain their investment while taking advantage of the newest technologies to make their assets more productive, more reliable and more cost efficient.”

For more information: http://www.ge-ip.com/products/family/pac_systems_controllers.

About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.

Apple Could Overtake Windows Platform in Two Years, Analyst Says

Apple now sells one device for every two Windows devices, revealing that Microsoft's huge advantage in the platform wars has rapidly decreased since the early 2000s, when the ratio was 56 Windows devices to every one Apple device.

For more, click the link below:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/258917/apple_could_overtake_windows_platform_in_two_years_analyst_says.html#tk.nl_bdx_h_crawl

News release:

Red Hat Unveils Enterprise Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Roadmap and Strategy

Raleigh

NC, Global, May 9, 2012

Red Hat outlines strategy for open hybrid enterprise PaaS with OpenShift

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its strategy for OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), the leading open cloud application platform for enterprises, to enable enterprises to take advantage of the benefits of PaaS by providing a consistent environment for both public cloud and on-premise datacenter usage. Under the roadmap, Red Hat plans to extend OpenShift PaaS to allow enterprises to use both leading-edge DevOps operational models, as well as traditional application management methodologies. Building on the core technology stack that already powers the OpenShift public PaaS, Red Hat’s OpenShift PaaS for enterprises will help provide the benefits of cloud computing in a way that maximizes both operational flexibility and application development efficiency.

“While use of PaaS and the blending of application development and deployment known as DevOps are growing rapidly and we expect the enterprise PaaS market to be worth more than $3 billion by 2015, it is still early days for PaaS offerings, combinations and support,” said Jay Lyman, senior analyst for 451 Research, a division of leading global analyst and data company The 451 Group. “That's why it is critical that the underlying components and supported pieces of PaaS are open, flexible and available the way customers and developers want them, which is typically in the cloud, on-premises or both. Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS benefits from its depth of enterprise Java support for the application lifecycle and Java EE6. This is key for enterprises looking to scale, automate and treat software as services, not only for new applications and development, but also for their large, legacy investment, infrastructure and process around existing applications.”

OpenShift To Date
Red Hat introduced OpenShift PaaS in May 2011, delivering to developers a cloud application platform with a choice of programming languages, frameworks and application lifecycle tools to build their applications. Since then, the OpenShift platform has evolved to include emerging development languages such as Node.js and became the first PaaS to support Java EE 6 and to offer comprehensive lifecycle support for Java in the cloud. Red Hat also made available to the open source community the code that powers its OpenShift platform through the open source OpenShift Origin project in April 2012.

Enterprise PaaS Roadmap
Today’s enterprises often have real-world operational requirements that are not supported by current PaaS offerings. Enterprises have operational considerations around compliance, enterprise architecture standards (including ITIL or other methodologies), IT governance, security, application lifecycle management, application development methodologies, organizational and process restrictions, data and compute locality and privacy restrictions and more. PaaS solutions must enable IT to empower their developers with these platforms while still implementing the PaaS in a way that meets their enterprise requirements.

“With the growth of the cloud market, developers have embraced PaaS due to the agility, speed and flexibility these platforms offer. Of the many PaaS offerings available, we haven’t seen any yet address the full needs of the enterprise,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business Unit at Red Hat. “However someone wants to build and manage their applications, they should be able to. With the PaaS roadmap and strategy we are outlining today, we’re paving the way for enterprises to use a Red Hat-powered open cloud application platform to build and run their applications, however best fits their business needs.”

Red Hat’s enterprise PaaS roadmap addresses the use cases and current challenges for enterprise PaaS adoption. Through OpenShift PaaS, Red Hat is delivering a leading cloud application platform that offers built-in secure and scalable multi-tenancy, proven enterprise-grade application containers, middleware, services and the latest technologies. Today, Red Hat brings this platform to more users through a variety of new locations and with multiple management model options. Combining the core enterprise technologies that power OpenShift PaaS– including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Storage, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and OpenShift’s integrated programming languages, frameworks and developer tools – Red Hat plans to deliver the OpenShift cloud application platform available as a PaaS for enterprises in an open and hybrid cloud.

OpenShift PaaS will be designed to provide a choice of consumption models across multiple cloud providers enabling enterprises to:

• Use OpenShift as a service, available in developer preview since May 2011 via openshift.redhat.com. A fee-based version of this service with full support from Red Hat is expected to be available later this year.
• Deploy and manage their own private PaaS leveraging the OpenShift PaaS platform, built on Red Hat enterprise technology.
• Deploy OpenShift on a variety of cloud and virtualization providers.

Red Hat plans to extend the OpenShift enterprise PaaS platform to provide a choice of management and operational models, including:

• A DevOps model that empowers developers to deploy and manage their applications via either a Public PaaS solution at openshift.redhat.com or a Private PaaS solution with OpenShift on-premise.
• An ITOps model that enables IT operations teams to provide the benefits of PaaS to their developers while maintaining centralized control of their applications and infrastructure, based on OpenShift with Red Hat CloudForms as the foundation.
• Self-managed and available offline by running OpenShift on a developer laptop.

For more information on Red Hat’s PaaS Strategy, join Red Hat executives for a virtual press conference webcast announcement at 11am ET on May 9. The webcast will also be available for replay. To register for the live broadcast or to access the replay, visit https://vts.inxpo.com/Launch/QReg.htm?ShowKey=9415.

To learn more about or to access OpenShift, visit openshift.redhat.com.

To read more on Red Hat’s perspective on the seven properties of an open cloud, visithttp://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/2/The-Open-Cloud-Red-Hats-Perspective.

For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visitwww.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with more than 70 offices spanning the globe. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with cloud, virtualization, management, storage and service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.


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Essar Group Unleashes Power of the Cloud With Windows Azure

Press release:

Essar Group Unleashes Power of the Cloud With Windows Azure

April 30, 2012

Multinational conglomerate reduces level of IT maintenance and cuts costs by nearly 65 percent while improving scalability with Microsoft’s cloud technology.

inShare1

MUMBAI, India — April 30, 2012 — In an effort to offer its customers Web-based applications with high performance and scalability while maintaining low infrastructure and management costs, multinational conglomerate Essar Group has implemented Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services platform, to deliver some of its applications.

A leader in various business sectors, including steel, energy, power, communications, shipping ports, logistics and construction, and with operations in more than 25 countries across five continents and revenues at $17 billion (U.S.), Essar remains competitive in an aggressive marketplace through a focused effort on superior customer service. With its enterprise customers in mind, the company sought to enhance its offerings with a cloud version of some of its applications.

Microsoft Services approached Essar with a cost-effective solution in Windows Azure that allowed the company to obtain the benefits of both public and private cloud computing while also reducing the level of IT maintenance required to manage the applications on-premises. Because it is hosted in Microsoft datacenters, Windows Azure is able to provide developers with on-demand computing and storage, as well as the ability to scale and manage Web applications.

Essar expects that the delivery of its applications through Windows Azure will enable the company to increase profitability and reduce costs by as much as 65 percent. Because IT staff members are also no longer allocating time to infrastructure management, they can devote more time to mission-critical operations.

“With Windows Azure, we don’t have to spend money on hardware and software, and we don’t have to spend time on administrative tasks related to infrastructure,” said Jayantha Prabhu, chief technology officer, Essar Group. “A scalable, well-defined platform gives us much fewer problems to solve and more time to focus on the overall experience of the application.”

In coordination with MindTree, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that delivers a broad range of IT services and software product engineering, Essar seamlessly transitioned four of its applications — HSECAR (Corrective Action Report (CAR) system), AVID (A Voyage into Insatiable Discovery), Saksham and Visitor Management System & Gate Pass System — to the Windows Azure platform in August 2011.

Since implementation, Essar has already experienced the multiple benefits of Microsoft’s cloud technology. “We quickly knew that we had made the best choice in selecting Windows Azure,” Prabhu said.

In addition to cutting costs, Windows Azure has given Essar the flexibility to scale compute and storage resources up and down as needed. “In fact, we can maintain the high level of scalability needed at a lower total cost of ownership compared with an on-premises solution,” Prabhu said.

More information on the Essar Group’s move to Windows Azure is available in the Microsoft case study and Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

More information on the services offered by MindTree is available at the company’s website.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

New Packet Processor from GE Delivers the Outstanding Performance Demanded by Communications Companies and the High Frequency Trading (HFT) Market

25 April 2012

New Packet Processor from GE Delivers the Outstanding Performance Demanded by Communications Companies and the High Frequency Trading (HFT) Market

 

• Innovative solution designed for communications equipment manufacturers, HFT applications and systems integrators features fastest Cavium OCTEON™ processor

• GE’s expertise, experience and customer support reduces cost and time-to-market
• Robust Product Lifecycle Management program provides long term lower cost of ownership

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — APRIL 25, 2012—Recognizing the need of a broad range of communications companies and telecommunicationsequipment manufacturers (TEMs) for the highest performance in packet processing, GE (NYSE: GE) today announced the WANic™ 66512 PCI Express® Packet Processor.

Designed for ease of development and deployment – resulting in reduced risk, faster time-to-market and faster time-to-revenue – and supported by GE’s renowned expertise and experience in fulfilling the requirements of Tier 1 TEMs, the WANic 66512 delivers exceptional performance and flexibility through its implementation of the fastest Cavium OCTEON® II processor, its PCI Express form factor, and the provision of board-level diagnostic tools and driver development kits.

The latest addition to the industry’s broadest range of PCI/PCI Expresspacket processors, and benefiting from GE’s extensive experience in their development, the WANic 66512 is distinguished by its use of Cavium’s 10-core 1.5GHz OCTEON™ II processor delivering very low latency and very high throughput to a broad range of applications, such as deep packet inspection, lawful intercept, secure access, network address translation, traffic management and session border control, as well as to high frequency trading applications.

“At GE Intelligent Platforms, we understand that every microsecond counts,” said Vibhoosh Gupta, Telecommunications Segment Leader, GE Intelligent Platforms. “Whether processing transactions on the trading floor or performing deep packet inspection for secure network access, the WANic 66512 Packet Processor is engineered to deliver the utmost performance. We also know that time-to-market is critical and therefore we complement the technical aspects of the WANic 66512 with world class expertise and a focus on exceptional customer service.”

The WANic 66512 benefits from GE’s extensive experience in providingextended support for the long term deployments that are typical of the telecommunications industry and a range of innovative programs designed to minimize cost of ownership by providing regular technology refresh opportunities as well as mitigating the effects of obsolescence.

It is designed for NEBS compliance and has been tested for interoperability, industry certification and regulatory compliance to ensure compatibility and rapid application deployment.

For more information: http://www.ge-ip.com/products/family/packet-processors
For data sheet: http://www.ge-ip.com/files/files/13174.pdf
A high resolution image to illustrate this release can be found at:www.genewscenter.com/imagelibrary/detail.asp?MediaDetailsID=4600

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.

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