Christmas Support

This is the last newsletter of the year.  Our operation will stop for the holiday season on 21 December 2007 Friday noon time and will resume on 10 January 2008 Thursday.  During the period we will have one staff (Mitch Fox) on stand-by for the NON STATUTORY days from 9am to 5pm for warranty spare part support.  The NON STAT days are 24, 27, 28, 31 Dec and 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 Jan.  His cell phone number is 021 024 1791.


Crystal Ball Gazing

As we are closing the year, it is appropriate that we do a crystal ball gazing for 2008 and beyond.  We have studied the forecast from various sources and consider the top 10 list from Gartner Inc in the US to be the most independent and relevant.  The list is not limited to PC or hardware, but is as diverse as including socio-economic developments.  In brief, the top 10 developments in 2008 as interpreted by us are:

1. Computer vendors are obliged to work on issues like reduction of Hazardous Substances and Wattage so as to protect the globe from further contamination
2. Voice & Video over IP will be integrated with email software soon
3. Business Process Management is being computerized and automated further
4. Data to describe documents and files across differing formats will have a standard soon
5. Server virtualization techniques allowing reduction of hardware and fast failure recovery is improving with hardware methods
6. Websites can be formed by mixing existing web sites, and tools will be available for this job
7. Websites will become the platform for communication and doing business
8. Computing fabrics- technologies such as SAS, AMD Torrenza and KVM containers etc will keep expanding the capability  and capacity of computer platforms
9. Websites will be accessible in motion thanks to new wireless technologies and efforts to improve handheld device formats
10. Social networking will become more influential and social websites will be advertising havens

The word "website" appears over 4 hot topics and is hidden in a few other topics.  No doubt the Internet is not a bubble but a certainty.  This is a confirmation of the business direction being pursued by most of our Supermicro New Zealand channel partners and there is no turning back.  The challenge ahead is indeed the business model for revenue growth.  The top player on the net is Google and Google does not earn revenue by subscription for services.  Google is the biggest hardware site on Earth and has the biggest or brightest software and hardware team.  Yet, Google is not on the list of top 10 software, hardware or service vendors.  Google is the top Internet advertising player!  This is food for thought.

Supermicro New Zealand is directly involved in 3 of the hot topics.  With the involvement of the top Compucon engineering team, we have established a roadmap that addresses Green IT, Virtualization and Computing Fabrics.  The technology foresight is as important as technical expertise for the team here to serve the channel properly.  The team here will assist Channel members to attain the best fitness for purpose and the lowest total cost of ownership.   Please use us as if we are your system platform department.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year