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The $1.4 billion IBM Australia Limited Superannuation Fund has changed its investment manager from Russell Investments to JANA Investment Advisers.

The IBM fund, which had just under $1.5 billion in funds at the end of September, previously engaged Russell as its investment consultant, according to Rainmaker Information data.

JANA Investment Advisers is expected to replace Russell in early 2010, however the deal is subject to the resolution of transitional project details, noted a fund statement.

“This change does not affect the name, performance or asset allocation of [members'] selected investment options,” said the fund.

Meanwhile, IBM Super is also reviewing its voluntary insurance arrangement to improve its offerings to members.

Changes to insurance arrangements are expected to be implemented early next year.
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It seems that Sony is preparing to offer samples of “TransferJet”, a short-range wireless transmission technology. TransferJet was demonstrated at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and could replace Bluetooth as a means of close proximity, high-speed wireless communication, boasting an effective maximum throughput of about 375Mb/s.

Sony will reportedly begin shipping both the “CXD3267AGG” and “CXD3268AGW” chips in January for 1,500 yen each (a bit over $17). If that is true, the company should have a polished demonstration of the technology at the upcoming CES event.

Sony’s new technology is destined for use in products like cell phones and digital cameras, and as of August 2009 the TransferJet Consortium consisted of 19 member companies, including Canon, Kodak, Hitachi, Nikon, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba and others. The consortium is also accepting applications for adopter membership.

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HP announced an extension of its BladeSystem solution builder program to enable additional independent software vendors (ISVs) to build solutions that customers can quickly deploy and easily manage in a converged infrastructure.

The HP converged infrastructure portfolio now includes new solutions capabilities developed with leading software vendors. New application infrastructure templates for HP BladeSystem Matrix (Matrix) represent best practice implementation and enable fast provisioning of complex infrastructures in minutes instead of months.

“Customers today are grappling with silos of infrastructure and are looking to simplify their data centers, as well as maximize the value of their technology investments,” said Santanu Ghose, Country Head, infrastructure software and blades, HP India. “With solutions such as HP BladeSystem Matrix, customers can align business initiatives with technology, creating a business-ready infrastructure that automatically adapts as market and business conditions change.”

Matrix templates are available on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as well as Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, and SAP NetWeaver. More Matrix templates are planned to be available in early 2010 to cover applications from Citrix, F5, McAfee, MicroStrategy, Novell, Red Hat, SAS, Siemens PLM Software, Inc., SunGard, TIBCO Software Inc. and VMware.
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IBM this week announced new development centers around the globe to help telecom operators develop new services that fit within today’s evolving communications business models.

Three standalone development centers will be located in China, South Africa and Malaysia. A fourth, in partnership with vendor Comverse, will set up shop in France.

The centers will focus on helping providers build new applications and services based on IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment 3.0 framework and will encompass software and hardware from a variety of business partners, IBM said.

Setting up global development centers has become standard practice for large telecom vendors, enabling them to handle local development needs but also in some cases to offer outsourced operational services as well.

The IBM Telecommunications Solution Center in China will operate as a subset of IBM’s already established China Development Labs. Among the work already underway there including efforts by China Mobile to deploy a new service creation platform.

IBM’s South Africa location, in Johannesburg, will serve all of Sub-Sahara Africa, IBM said. But Africa is also served by three additional solution center locations in Nairobi, Lagos and Cape Town. Among the work being done at the South Africa location is a proof of concept solution called “The Enterprise Applications for IMS + SDP for Mobile Healthcare” – which showcases how the health care industry can use standards-based telecom applications to improve the delivery of medical services.

IBM is opening a third center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Finally, the new Comverse Center of Excellence will work within the IBM Telecom Solutions Lab in France. The center will focus on BSS/OSS and service delivery platform solutions support.
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