HP announces a change in leadership for the Printing and Personal Systems (PSS) unit-- after little more than a year executive VP Todd Bradley steps down from the role to assume leadership of Strategic Growth Initiatives.

In his new position Bradley will work with HP CEO Meg Whitman on boosting business in China and "extending the company’s critical channel partner relationships around the world."

“There’s nothing more important to HP than our channel partners and the future of our business in China,” Whitman says. “I’ve asked Todd to use his expertise to focus on these areas. I’ve also asked him to study the landscape of small companies and startups that could partner with HP to spur growth.”

Taking over PSS from Bradley is former Acer UK managing director and Lenovo VP (not to mention current HP PPS Asia Pacific and Japan senior VP) Dion Weisler.

Supposedly leaked roadmap presentation slides reveal the next Intel Haswell product, code-named Haswell-E-- an update on the company's high-end desktop (HEDT) platform complete with more physical cores among other improvements.

According to VR-Zone Haswell-E does away with 4-core CPUs in favour of 6- and 8-core chips with up to 20MB of L3 cache built using the 22nm process.

Hyper Threading gives the CPU a maximum of 16 logical cores, while maximum TDP ranges from 130W to 140W.

The desktop platform is supposed to rely on the "Wellsburg" motherboard chipset, with the LGA2011-3 socket handling quad-channel DDR4 RAM (2133MHz maximum clock speed, up to one DIMM per channel).

HP has a busy week at the Discover 2013 enterprise conference, Las Vegas-- it reveals a revamped Converged Cloud, the HAVEn big data platform, servers aimed at the SMB segment and additions to the Converged Storage product fmily. 

The HP Converged Cloud now features common OpenStack-based architecture in both private (CloudSystem) and public (Cloud OS) cloud flavours, as well as enterprise-level security and feature additions.

The latest MoonShot servers are also OpenStack-powered, while HP cloud services gain a number of enhancements such as wider data access, virtual private cloud network functionality (via SDN), custom image uploading and a bulk import service. 

“Only HP has the portfolio and expertise that combines the innovative power of open systems with enterprise-grade manageability and security," the company claims. 

The company then takes on big data with the HAVEn open business analytics platform. A combination of HP (Autonomy, Vertica, ArcSight and Operations Management) and Hadoop technologies, HAVEn offers an open architecture supporting a variety of analytics tools, meaning customers avoid vendor lock-in and compatibility issues.  Read more...

Dell and Oracle announce an expanded global alliance at the Dell Enterprise Forum-- one complete with plans a new x86 infrastructure offering combining Dell hardware with Oracle software. 

Through the alliance Oracle names Dell preferred x86 server partner, while Dell makes Oracle a preferred enterprise infrastructure partner. This means Dell customers get access to Oracle technologies (Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, Enterprise Manager) optimised to run on Dell x86-based solutions. 

"By combining Oracle’s strong position in the database and business ap Read more...

Intel opens Computex 2013 with the expected reveal of the Haswell CPU lineup, processors the company describes as the "first system-on-a-chip for PCs" designed for "new form factors and 2-in-1 designs."

The launch was something of a repeat of what was seen seen last year... only instead of Ivy Bridge, Windows 8 and crazy transforming PCs there were Windows 8.1 and crazy 2-in-1 PCs joining the 4th generation of Intel Core processor.

“Two years ago we talked about reinventing [notebooks] with the ultrabook and today we’re talking about 2-in-1. It’s PC performance and tablet-like mobility in one,” Intel EVP Tom Kilroy says in his Computex keynote. “We’re on the verge of ushering in an exciting new era. We believe the 2-in-1 era is the new norm.”

Around 50 2-in-1 designs are already in the pipeline, ranging from the "ferris wheel" Dell XPS 12 and detachable Asus Transformer Book Trio to various "slider," "swivel" and raised hinge offerings from OEMs such as Asus, Acer and Quanta.

Cisco coughs up $107 million to spice up its business with JouleX, a developer of energy management technologies for networked-attached and data centre assets. 

JouleX sells the JouleX Energy Manager (JEM)-- software providing customers with an energy consumption overview for a full range client devices and data centre systems, from PCs and thin clients to physical and virtual servers, switches, routers, storage systems, VoIP phones, printers and mobile devices. 

Cisco is already familiar with JouleX, since Catalyst 3K and 4K switches already ship with the JouleX for EnergyWise a free option. Read more...