September 1st, 2009. A month has passed since the release of KDE 4.3.0, so today the KDE Community announces the immediate availability of KDE 4.3.1, a bugfix, translation and maintenance update for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop. KDE 4.3.1 is a monthly update to KDE 4.3. It ships with a desktop workspace and many cross-platform applications such as administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, multimedia software, games, artwork, development tools and more. KDE’s award-winning tools and applications are available in more than 50 languages.

KDE 4.3.1 is dedicated to Emma Hope Pyne, the daughter of Michael Pyne. Emma Hope suddenly passed away last week. The KDE community feels incredibly sad about this loss and wishes Michael and the family and friends all the strength needed to cope with the loss of Emma Hope.

KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE can be obtained in source and various binary formats from http://download.kde.org and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major GNU/Linux and UNIX systems shipping today.

Enhancements
As a service release, the changelog contains a list of bugfixes and improvements. Notable improvements include, but are not limited to:

• KDE 4.3 is now also available in Croatian
• A crash when editing toolbar setup has been fixed
• Support for transferring files through SSH using KIO::Fish has been fixed
• A number of bugs in KWin, KDE’s window and compositing manager has been fixed
• A large number of bugs in KMail, KDE’s email client are now gone

Note that the changelog is usually incomplete, for a complete list of changes that went into KDE 4.3.1, you can browse the Subversion log. KDE 4.3.1 also ships a more complete set of translations for many of the 50+ supported languages.

To find out more about the KDE 4.3 desktop and applications, please refer to the KDE 4.3.0, KDE 4.2.0, KDE 4.1.0 and KDE 4.0.0 release notes. KDE 4.3.1 is a recommended update for everyone running KDE 4.3.0 or earlier versions.

Installing KDE 4.3.1 Binary Packages
Packagers. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 4.3.1 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE’s http://download.kde.org. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, may become available over the coming weeks.

Package Locations. For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE Project has been informed, please visit the KDE 4.3.1 Info Page.

Compiling KDE 4.3.1
The complete source code for KDE 4.3.1 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 4.3.1 are available from the KDE 4.3.1 Info Page.

Supporting KDE
KDE is a Free Software community that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether it is help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information.

About KDE
KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE’s products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE4’s full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X.

Trademark Notices. KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

At VMworld 2009 today, HP announced innovative management and service solutions that extend the benefits of virtualization beyond servers to the entire infrastructure.

As a result, customers can maximize resource utilization, improve administrator productivity and drive business growth.

HP also announced the first virtual desktop infrastructure solution for under $1,000 per user seat.⁽¹⁾The solution was demonstrated during VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz’s keynote presentation today.

Virtual desktop infrastructure is a server-based computing model that gives users a PC desktop experience, while securing all applications, management and processing in the data center. The HP Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View specifically addresses the performance bottlenecks and management complexities of other offerings. Customers can test the solution in select HP solution centers worldwide.

Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that companies will spend nearly $100 billion by 2012 on the management and administration of virtual servers and expects that new virtual server installations will outnumber physical server shipments, starting as early as the end of this year.⁽²⁾ HP is the first provider to address these challenges by delivering a converged infrastructure that brings together all data center resources, including server, storage, network, I/O, application and desktop.

“Chief information officers need solutions that increase the cost-saving benefits of virtualization while cutting through the complexity and administrative issues caused by virtual sprawl,” said Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP. “For more than half a decade, HP and VMware have jointly invested in technologies that enable customers to maximize the value of their virtualization efforts. By extending virtualization beyond servers through HP’s converged infrastructure solutions, customers can fully realize the potential of their people, applications and technology infrastructure.”

Start virtualizing your infrastructure

Only HP can deliver a complete, end-to-end virtualization solution that combines hardware and software to:

• Cost-effectively deliver a virtual desktop infrastructure that provides increased data protection and uptime. HP’s Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View™ also lowers support costs versus traditional PC environments.⁽³⁾
• Lower costs up to 50 percent and improve capacity utilization up to 33 percent by virtualizing storage capacity with HP LeftHand P4000 and other StorageWorks virtualization solutions.⁽³⁾

Information pertaining to other new solutions for virtualizing infrastructure is available at http://www.hp.com/go/virtualization.

Increase administrator productivity

To help simplify data center management of a virtual and physical infrastructure, and maximize VMware investments, customers need common tools. HP, teamed with VMware, is delivering new capabilities that bridge the physical and virtual data center silos through unified management and automation. Key customer benefits include:

• Direct administrator access, through VMware vCenter™, to the physical infrastructure to manage server health, power use and remote control for the first time with the new HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter™.
• Increased administrator effectiveness with HP Operations Manager for virtualization by monitoring the availability and performance of all virtual and physical assets through a single common dashboard.
• Reduced risk of downtime with HP Network Automation which, for the first time, gives network administrators control of the VMware vSwitch in addition to the physical network environments.
• Simplified storage management by monitoring and configuring HP Enterprise Virtual Arrays within a virtual machine using the new HP StorageWorks Command View Enterprise Virtual Array management suite.
• Simplified and reduced risk of migration to client virtualization with the HP Virtual Client Essentials software portfolio, which includes easy-to-use setup, configuration and management tools for thin clients. This solution also offers a repurposed PC deployment solution and will support VMware’s software implementation of PC over IP (PCoIP) protocol.

Accelerate time to value

HP provides the experience, breadth of technology, partner ecosystem and services needed to simplify complex virtualization projects, delivering:

• Improved management of virtualized environments in the data center as a result of a recently signed alliance agreement between EDS, an HP company, and VMware. The agreement brings together EDS data center expertise and VMware virtualization leadership to provide clients with a robust, well-managed virtualized environment.
• Reduced total cost of ownership and risk by leveraging virtualization best practices with the newHP SAN Readiness Assessment for Server Virtualization and the newly packaged HP Migration Services for VMware vSphere.
• More optimized partner virtualization solutions for HP BladeSystem hardware with the HP Solution Builder program for BladeSystem than any other systems provider. This program provides testing, technology, marketing and integration services from HP for 334 partners to ensure their solutions maximize the value of HP server platforms.
• Enhanced network efficiency and lower costs. Together with VMware, HP is leveraging open industry standards such as Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) to provide a process for virtualizing switches, network interface cards and access points. These can be managed universally to increase visibility, improve traffic control and simplify manageability.

Global leader in VMware technologies

Leading in virtualization performance, the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 has achieved the highest VMware VMmark benchmark score in the industry – 53.73 at 35 tiles. This is 58 percent better than the previous highest eight-socket (48 cores) result. HP also garnered the highest scores for four processors and 24 cores, as well as two processors and eight cores.⁽⁴⁾

HP has the most VMware-certified server and storage systems and the largest number of VMware-certified professionals supporting heterogeneous environments. HP also offers customers the largest global VMware Authorized Training Center network, with more than 100 training centers in more than 30 countries.

More information on today’s news is available in an online press kit athttp://www.hp.com/go/HPatVMworld2009.

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.

⁽¹⁾ Sub $1,000 per user price calculation includes the virtual desktop infrastructure hardware and software components (VMware View Premier, Microsoft® VECD, and HP software licenses) for a fully loaded virtual desktop configuration for 750 productivity users.

⁽²⁾ IDC Worldwide Server Virtualization Shipment Forecast, August 2009.

⁽³⁾ Calculation based on aggregate best practice guidelines.

⁽⁴⁾ VMware VMmark results, Aug. 25, 2009. VMmark utilizes SPECjbb2005 and SPECweb2005, which are available from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), and HP independently published two-processor/eight-core VMmark result at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliant-bl/hp_bl490g6_x5570_vmmark.pdf.

VMware VMmark is a product of VMware Inc. Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2009 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2008. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

“Today more than ever, enterprises need an affordable, reliable and efficient way to deploy and manage desktop infrastructures,” says Jan Jackman, Vice President, End User Services, IBM Global Technology Services. “The public desktop cloud service is designed to help bring cost savings, flexibility, scalability and security to clients like never before.”
The new IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM Cloud subscription service helps clients virtualize desktop computing resources, and provide a logical, rather than a physical, method of access to data, computing power, storage capacity and other resources. This service requires no up front capital or one time expense and is designed to provide enhanced levels of security, resiliency, reliability, and quality for virtual desktops. The service offers flexible delivery models, including three standard cloud-based offerings, dedicated infrastructure, and customer premise solutions, while helping to streamline data backup and recovery, and reduce unauthorized access.
Through key technology and business partnerships with Citrix, Desktone, VMware and Wyse, along with IBM tools for customer assessment and strategic planning, IBM is helping clients address PC replacement dilemmas, deliver resilience and reliability for critical information, and resolve Internet access parity problems, all at competitive subscription service pricing.
“We’re thrilled that IBM recognizes Desktone’s pioneering work in desktops as a service® (DaaS®), from both technical and market development perspectives, and has selected us to provide foundational technology for its innovative service,” says Harry Ruda, CEO, Desktone. “Desktone’s solution is the first and only virtual desktop hosting platform designed specifically for the cloud era, providing unique capabilities such as multi-tenancy and seamless multi-data center support, key elements to designing and building a scalable, cost-effective global desktop cloud offering.”
Supported by government funding, the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network is partnering with IBM on a grass roots project called CBO Connect to provide desktop computing to over 200 sites nationwide. The CBO Connect is a coalition of community based organizations consisting of non-profits, schools and libraries where visitors have access to 21st century classrooms that offer desktop cloud computing, interactive video conferencing for distance learning, video distribution system with digital signage, and other classroom and administrative services.
“We recognize the interdependency between access to online services, economic development and the quality of life,” said Jose Rodriguez, CEO of the Hispanic Information Telecommunications Network. “By working with IBM, we can build classrooms to serve as technology learning centers for underserved broadband communities and ultimately provide a low cost entry point for residential subscribers by using cloud computing services.”
IBM plans to make the IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM Cloud service available in North America and Europe starting October 2009.