BMC Software today announced that Unisys will standardize on key pieces of BMC's Business Service Management (BSM) offering, including BMC Asset Management, Discovery, Performance Management, and Monitoring solutions, to support its IT outsourcing services delivery across Asia Pacific.

"We look after critical components of our clients' businesses," said Lee Ward, general manager for Unisys Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services Delivery, Asia Pacific. "By standardizing on BMC Software solutions across our delivery centers in Asia Pacific, we're able to ensure that clients operating across multiple markets receive the same quality service experience regardless of their location. BMC's integrated BSM solutions are designed to allow us to quickly locate and begin managing our clients' assets with faster problem solving and resolution, optimized IT systems performance, and more accurate management of IT service level agreements."

Operating as a "single source of truth" on the IT infrastructure, the BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) will give Unisys a central, integrated repository and dashboard to monitor and manage clients' IT infrastructure. By using the automated BMC Discovery solution, Unisys will be able to quickly, accurately and automatically populate client asset information into the BMC Atrium CMDB, to rapidly respond to any changes in a client's business.

Having the asset and application information centrally managed from the BMC Atrium CMDB will provide Unisys with a clear view of the relationships between IT assets and critical business functions so that infrastructure and support services can respond quickly to keep these critical business functions up and running. BMC Atrium CMDB will allow Unisys clients to have an online, real-time view of what is being managed in their infrastructure.

BMC Performance Management, Event Management and Service Impact Management solutions will enable Unisys to help its clients optimize their IT infrastructure to improve end user satisfaction by ensuring performance, availability and management of both the virtual and physical infrastructure components.

Mike Davies, BMC's managing director for South Asia, said: "Unisys is focused on delivering value to its clients. Working with BMC now gives Unisys a set of powerful software solutions that puts IT firmly in control of the infrastructure to not only drive value, but provide them with the flexibility to deliver their services in a secure manner at the right cost."

The strategic dilemma facing Infrastructure Outsourcing (IO) suppliers - caused by the convergence of 'traditional' (multinational) and offshore suppliers' value propositions, a maturing remote infrastructure management delivery model, and adoption of labor arbitrage by traditional suppliers - will be discussed in a one-hour Webinar hosted by analysts from the Everest Research Institute and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. During the last decade, the emergence and rapid growth of new models of infrastructure services delivery, such as Remote Infrastructure Management (RIMO) and Information Management Services (IMS), are showing signs of convergence with more traditional ways of delivering infrastructure service. The Emerging Supplier Dilemma in the Remote Infrastructure Management Market report will be discussed in a one-hour Webinar on July 10 (10 a.m. CDT; 11 a.m. EDT).

According to Ross Tisnovsky, Vice President of ITO Research at Everest Research Institute, and Senior Analyst Rod Bourgeois of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co, offshore RIMO suppliers still hold a minor share of the IO market; nonetheless, there are increasing signs of the sophistication of RIMO leading to a growing convergence of the models of infrastructure delivery. The trend poses a challenge for buyers who need to understand the complexities of the offerings and suppliers who must refine their strategies, said Tisnovsky.

"The convergence of IO models is driving offshore suppliers to one of three choices," said Tisnovsky. "They can continue to adopt key elements of the IMS model, build added value to their RIMO offering or simply continue to focus on classical RIMO services that rely on labor savings as a key driver. On the other hand, traditional IO suppliers are confronted with a simpler, but not less challenging option: focus on end-to-end infrastructure deals that avoid direct competition or develop variations of a converged RIMO/IMS offering with an active role of labor arbitrage."

Evidence of convergence can be seen as offshore suppliers of remote management services are not limiting themselves anymore to targeting smaller companies with a basic labor arbitrage value proposition, says Bourgeois. Large buyers (above US$10 billion in revenue) now account for 55 percent of the deals signed by offshore suppliers. Although the majority of offshore deals are still based on delivering remote services offshore, RIMO suppliers held 24 percent of more traditional 'IMS-like' deals in 2007 compared to only five percent in 2004.

The 45-minute Webinar, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers with participants, will take place on July 10, 2008, at 10 a.m. CDT; 11 a.m. EDT. To register, please visit: www.everestresearchinstitute.com/Events/Webinars.

The project would allow Flash pages to be returned in a search, meaning millions of rich Internet applications will become searchable

In a move that could add substantial volumes of Flash content to Internet search results, Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to provide optimized Flash Player technology to enhance the searching of this content.

The project, being announced Tuesday, will enable searches on Flash content to return text and links, which can then be indexed, said Justin Everett-Church, Adobe senior product manager for the Flash Player. Content from a Flash application or even a game or advertisement will be available to search engines. Pages containing a Flash .SWF file will be returned in a search.

"The Flash Player is going to be used by Google and Yahoo on their servers to run Flash content at runtime," Everett-Church said. "This means much better search results for end-users. [Until now], it has been a challenge to search Flash content on the Web."

Google will begin offering Flash search capabilities Tuesday while Yahoo plans to do so in a future update to Yahoo Search. With Google's rollout, millions of rich Internet applications and dynamic Web experiences utilizing Flash will become searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter the content.

Adobe's move was described as a positive one by an analyst in the search engine space, who nonetheless said she would take a wait-and-see approach to gauge the exact benefits.

"Historically, search engines haven't been able to crawl Flash content at all," said Vanessa Fox, an editor at Search Engine Land, an online journal covering the search industry.

"I'm sort of reserving my judgment a little," she said. It is good that search engines are working with Adobe to surface Flash-based information, but the impact remains to be seen, Fox said. She added she has not been able to get examples of how many more pages can be indexed via the project.

"It could be a large impact or it also could be really small," said Fox. There are ecommerce sites based on Flash technology that now could make their content more visible, according to Fox.

"The idea of this is that search engines will now be able to extract the text and the link," but information maintained only in videos will still be invisible, she said. Video search capabilities could be added at some point, Everett-Church said.

"I do think developers who are implementing Flash on their site probably still need to pay attention to search engine optimization," Fox said. Adobe's effort probably will not fix all the current issues, she said.

Google and Yahoo, in prepared statements, both espoused purported benefits of the endeavor.

"Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files," said Bill Coughran, Google senior vice president of engineering. "Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now can help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing content better."

"Yahoo is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation," said Sean Suchter, vice president of Yahoo Search technology engineering.

While Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo initially, plans call for eventually making the new search capability available to benefit all content publishers, developers, and end-users, the company said.

Whether it all displace the B-to-B networking staple is anyone as guess

When Dan Kuperstein is at an event he likes to hand out his business card. Usually, though, he does not deliver it with a handshake, but via cell phone.

Kuperstein, an executive vice president of business development at Argentinian software development outsourcing company Globants office in Hopkinton, no longer uses traditional paper business cards. Rather he prefers the immediacy of sending electronic cards directly to mobile phones, tapping into a service being offered by startup 211Me Inc.

What I like about it is when you are meeting folks or speaking at an event, instead of giving them a card, this is a little sticky for them, he said. It stands out.

Robert DeFranco, a co-founder and CEO of 211Me, expects others will feel the same way. The Westborough-based startup is aiming to replace the ubiquitous paper business card with easy-to-assemble electronic cards, which users can distribute through cell phones or e-mail.

The Software & Information Industry Association spent $227,866 in the first quarter to lobby on trade measures, outsourcing and other issues, according to a recent disclosure form.

The trade group, whose members include Adobe Systems Inc., McAfee Inc. and Intel Corp., also lobbied on bills to protect copyright and intellectual property, as well as proposals to overhaul the U.S. patent system.

In addition, the group lobbied on data security measures and legislation to crack down on identity theft, bills to promote math and science education, immigration matters and more, according to a disclosure form filed with the House clerk's office on April 21.

Besides Congress, the Software & Information Industry Association lobbied the Department of Education, the Federal Trade Commission and the Commerce Department, among other government agencies.

Among those registered to lobby for the group in the first three months of year was Mark Bohannon, former chief technology counsel at the Commerce Department.