What's Happening In Technology Sectors
:: NEWS
PICOS TAKING OFF. According to
market research firm Pacific Media Associates, projector manufacturers are predicting
explosive growth in the worldwide
market for pico projectors, from
over 2.5 million units in 2010 to over 17
million units in 2012. The tiny, batterypowered
devices are expected to have
mostly VGA (640 x 480) or lower
resolution, with pixel counts shifting
upward by 2012.
IMPLEMENTING UC. Fifty-three
percent of higher ed institutions, government
agencies, and other organizations
surveyed by CDW-G are either actively implementing or planning
to implement unified communications
(UC) solutions. And 70 percent of
organizations currently in the UC planning
and implementation phases expect
to complete their adoption within two
years, despite the weak economy.
Respondents numbered 766 IT professionals
in business, government, higher
ed, and healthcare. Read more here.
ACADEMIC SOCIAL BOOKMARKING.
Murray Goldberg, founder
of WebCT (now Blackboard), has announced the beta
launch of Brainify.com, an academic
social bookmarking community for higher
ed students and faculty. In addition to
bookmarking and tagging websites,
Brainify allows users to create groups of
common academic interest, pose academic
questions to the commuity, and closely
follow the collections, comments, and
questions of other community members.
Brainify also records each user's "reputation,"
a value based on the community's
reaction to the contributions of that user.
INCREASED BANDWIDTH and security needs led to
a network upgrade at College of the Canyons (CA).
CAMPUSWIDE CONNECTIVITY.
College of the Canyons (CA) has selected
Enterasys Networks to provide secure connectivity for
3,000-plus wired and wireless devices
serving more than 24,000 students, faculty,
and staff, across multiple campus
buildings. The fast-growing community
college is implementing 10GbE network
connectivity throughout all campus
locations, to support increased bandwidth
and security needs, wireless
access, and voice and video traffic.
NAME CHANGE. Document camera
vendor Samsung Opto-Electronics will
now operate as Samsung Techwin America.
The name change better defines the
division's alignment with Samsung
Techwin, its parent company in South
Korea, says a company spokesperson.
SECURITY & COMMERCE
MANAGEMENT. Blackboard has
announced that a growing number of colleges
and universities have recently
deployed its Transact campus commerce
and security management platform,
including Endicott College (MA), Fort
Lewis College (CO), and Point Loma
Nazarene University (CA). Among the
functions encompassed in the Transact
platform are campus ID card technology,
on- and off-campus payment solutions,
facility access control, mass notification,
and other security solutions. Read more
here.
:: PEOPLE
NEW SUNGARD HE CEO. Ron
Lang has been named CEO of SunGard Higher Education. Lang joined SunGard
in 1998, and most recently served
as CEO of the company's
Enterprise
Solutions Group. He
succeeds Michael
Muratore, interim
CEO of SunGard HE
since last September, who has
announced his retirement.
TO REGENT BOARD. Regent Education,
a provider of financial aid management
software-as-a-service
(SaaS)
solutions for higher
ed institutions, has
appointed Brian
Madocks to its board
of directors. Madocks most recently
was CEO of SunGard HE.
HP VET TO PROSTOR. ProStor
Systems, a supplier of removable disk
storage solutions for backup and
archiving, has appointed Frank
Harbist as president and CEO. Harbist
joins ProStor after a 21-year
career at HP, where
he most recently served as VP of
strategy and operations for business
critical systems.