This high-energy consumer show attracts a diverse audience that includes IT professionals, technology enthusiasts, students and consumers as well as regional traders.

Cisco Systems to are participating in GITEX Technology Week Under the theme ‘Within, between and beyond the Cloud’, Cisco will be showcasing its innovations with a main focus on Cloud, that will increase value to customers, create new business opportunities for partners and drive technology advances in the region. Cisco will examine the most current and critical trends and issues facing the Cloud and Virtualization landscape, and how Cisco is different with utilizing the network as the fundamental foundation that interconnects the world of many clouds while focusing on Data Center, Virtualization, Collaboration and Borderless Networks.

“Cisco’s ability to innovate is why customers rely on us as a strategic business partner rather than merely a product technology vendor,” said Wayne Hull, director and general manager, Cisco UAE. “Our aim is to leverage GITEX Technology Week as a platform to showcase our product innovation, whereby customers and partners will have the opportunity to explore how the network has become the most strategic IT asset today. Furthermore, GITEX is also an important event to connect with key business decision makers and continue to build relationships with customers and partners.”

Cisco’s stand will be located at the Zabeel Hall, GulfComms, stand number Z-B, 30. So if you happens to be in this part of the world its worth attending this exhibition

According industry experts the first ever Mango powered phone is expected to hit the selves later this year; however an official timescale for release has not yet been disclosed.

Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Engineering said, “This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations. Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process. The Mango update for current Windows Phone handsets will be ready this fall, and of course will come pre-installed on new Windows Phones.”

The new Windows Phone Mango update will bring close to 500 new features to the OS. Some of these include integration with Internet Explorer 9 and app multi-tasking. I am waiting eagerly to see how Microsoft will try impact the smartphone market with its new OS.

According Reuters the next version of iPhone will go on sale in September 2011, citing three sources with direct knowledge of Apple’s supply chain, the news agency said that production of the iPhone 5 is likely to start in July or August.

The Apple’s next-generation iPhone will have a faster processor but it will be similar in appearance to the iPhone 4, Reuters identified a number of components suppliers for the new phone, namely camera module maker Largan Precision for camera, Wintek to supply the touchscreen, and Foxconn Technology to supply the casing, but none of the vendors would confirm the reports.

Some market observers have suggested that the new phone will be unveiled at an as-yet unscheduled Apple event in September, as Apple has normally held a music-related product launch event in that month. It’s too early to predict the move Apple is going to take; at least I would love to see some restrictions pertained to flash and additional memory expansion  are overcome in the new version of iPhone. Not to forget Android is doing an amazing job and its market share is increasing day by day.

Perhaps Apple can come out with a new version of iPad by testing the success of it’s new version of iPhone. Especially when the tablet market is growing exponentially.

 The newly  designed SDK kit will  give developers access to audio, programming interfaces, system application, and direct control of the Kinect sensors, so that they can create new applications based around the motion sensing device.

Microsoft plans to release a commercial version at later date , but the SDK will be a starter kit designed to make it simpler for the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich natural user interfaces using Kinect technology.

  ”Microsoft’s investments in natural user interfaces are vital to our long-term vision of creating computers that are intuitive to use and able to do far more for us,” said Mundie. “The fruits of these research investments are manifesting across many of our products, Kinect for Xbox 360 among them.”

Microsoft is continuing to make developments and investments in natural user interfaces and its developments are appearing in Microsoft products such as Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Surface 2.0, Bing for mobile and Office 2010 Mini Translator

Hay Group has identified top 20 best companies for Leadership. General Electric tops the list, followed by Procter and Gamble and Intel Corporation Accenture is at no 8, Microsoft at no 12, Hewlett-Packard at no 15 and the leading Networking Company Cisco Systems at number 17. It’s 6^th Year in a row; Hay Group has identified which organizations have the best leadership practices and what we can learn from them

The 2010 featured some new faces among top 20 are include Microsoft, FedEx, PepsiCo and Pfizer while Infosys, IKEA, Zappos, UPS and General Mills have dropped out of the front-runners’ listing. To see how the top 20 ranking has changed over the last five years, click here.

The top 20 Best Companies for Leadership

As technology is evolving the importance of Unified Communications is growing, yet until now I thought Cisco is a leader when it comes to Unified Communication especially after the introductions of Tele presence and WebEX, but others vendors too are competing hard. Avaya took over Nortel when it was in crises, to enhance its product line. Now its Microsoft and Polycom are entering into an alliance, which provides an opportunity for them to jointly develop, sell and market Unified Communication products based Polycom endpoints and Microsoft Communication Server 14.

Polycom’s solutions for Microsoft Communications Server 14  will span markets ranging from the enterprise, to small and medium-sized businesses, to governments, the statement said. The promised integration aims to help bring Microsoft’s UC product together with Polycom’s conferencing tools, which the companies said over time will make the two systems easier for IT and telecommunications staff to manage.

 ”Microsoft and Polycom solutions play a critical role within our current and future unified communications strategy,” said Martin Smale, IT director at NDS, a News Corp. company. “We’re already benefiting from improved collaboration, increased productivity, and significant ROI based on our existing UC network, and we’re looking forward to leveraging the expanded offerings from two of our most valued vendors in the UC space.”

“Our research shows that nearly 70 percent of the companies considering a unified communications solution are thinking of deploying Microsoft Office Communications Server,” said Brent Kelly, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. “These enterprises need seamless integration and interoperability between Office Communicator on the desktop and personal, group, and telepresence video solutions like those offered by Polycom for executive offices, meeting suites, and conference rooms. By working together, Microsoft and Polycom are making it easier for organizations to have a true end-to-end unified communications environment, which includes high definition video.”

For further details on the alliance have a look at the press release from Microsoft.

A new vulnerability is affecting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has surfaced. While enterprises wait on a patch, there are actions they can take to mitigate the vulnerability.
- Microsoft has confirmed reports of a cross-site scripting vulnerability in SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0. According to Microsoft, the vulnerability could allow escalation of privilege (EoP) within the SharePoint site. . If an attacker successfully exploits the vulnerability, the person could run commands against the SharePoint server with the privileges of the compromised user.

“In the elevation of privilege scenario, an attacker could convince a user to click a specially crafted URL containing a script that would be run on the target SharePoint site,” Microsoft warned. “This URL could be in an e-mail message, on a Web site, or in an Instant Message conversation. Once the user clicks the specially crafted URL, the browser would run the script with the same privileges as the targeted user on the SharePoint site.”

Microsoft officials did not state when a security update will be ready to address the issue.

Microsoft has delivered a new Community Technology preview (CTP) of the next generation of the company’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM software, codenamed quot;CRM5. quot; The March 25 release is the third CTP (CTP3) of the quot;CRM5 quot; technology and it is aimed at software developers.

Rest of the article can be viewed at the following link.

This December 15 and 16^th Cisco Systems is Conducting a live Virtual Tradeshow “Journey to the Virtualized Data Center: From Vision to Reality” in sponsorship with it world class rusted partner like  APC, BMC Software, EMC2, Emerson, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle and Panduit.  

Pic Courtesy: Cisco Systems.

Do register to attend this virtual event to learn the future of data center; you might get the chance to look the future of Data Center from the perspectives of networking, storage, applications, and physical infrastructure technology partners. You may also get a chance to look at how Cisco along with partners helping IT to deliver more value to their business.

 Whether you’re just starting out on the journey – looking for cost effective ways to get more out of your current data center – or whether you’re already well down the virtualization track and thinking about how to deploy a Private Cloud or IT as a Service, there is valuable information for all.

Attend one or both days and earn a chance to win an Apple iPod nano 16GB!! See

Register now and join other IT and data center decision makers in this unique virtualized trade show environment.

Event Type: Live Virtual Trade Show

Date: December 15, 2009: 07:30 – 14:30 PST

December 16, 2009: 07:30 – 13:30 PST

Recently I was browsing a press release from Microsoft about the thinnest keyboard ever available, which is slightly thicker than an AAA battery.

Pic Courtesy: Microsoft

The newly designed keyboard is exclusively for Bluetooth computers, and Microsoft called this keyboard as Mobile Keyboard 6000. The Mobile Keyboard 6000 comes with a ‘Comfort Curve’ that gives your wrists a rest with a slight 6-degree curve. While it might not seem like a big deal, Microsoft has already sold more than 10 million of its Comfort Curve keyboards so there’s definitely a wrist-concerned market out there.  One more unique feature of Mobile Keyboard 6000 is number pad can be separated and used separately.

Microsoft will be selling the Mobile Keyboard 6000 next month for $89.95. But if it’s just the Number Pad you’re after, you’ll need to spend $44.95.