Wireless impetus

To speed up adoption of WiMax technology and products, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Sprint have announced the formation of the Open Patent Alliance (OPA).

The OPA will advance a competitive and open intellectual-property-rights model to stimulate a larger WiMax industry, one that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMax technology, devices and applications globally. It will form a WiMax patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licences from patent-owners at an affordable cost.

The body will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products. 

Servers

IBM Thailand launches first of new-generation Power Systems

IBM Thailand has launched the first of a new generation of IBM Power Systems that will provide IBM's System i and System p clients a single, unified line of servers with increased application choice and reduced energy and administration costs.

The new Power Systems servers from IBM will incorporate industry-leading Power6 processors and support Unix, Linux and i applications simultaneously on a single-server system. Customers can increase both performance and energy efficiency by moving their mission-critical applications to new systems using the same i applications and operating system.

Clients will also have access to Power6 Energy Scale technology, which offers features that help manage energy costs.