Microsoft Surface 2 Goes on Pre-Order

Microsoft Surface, the uber-cool, yet incredibly bulky technology that supports touch and device interaction was trimmed down earlier this year at CES 2011 to become the super svelte Microsoft Surface 2.0. Now its Samsung incarnation, the SUR40 is ready for pre-order in 23 countries (including the U.S.) and could arrive in stores, hospitals, restaurants and more by early 2012.

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An innovative and exciting device when it first arrived on the scene in 2007, Microsoft Surface is a touch-screen on steroids. In its first incarnation, the coffee-table-sized Microsoft Surface used a combination of cameras, computers and touch sensitivity to allow multiple people to interact with on-screen activities. In a demonstration I saw in 2008, Microsoft representatives placed a smartphone on the screen, which Microsoft Surface then recognized, displayed information about the device and let me set about choosing different model options. Other demonstrations included a customer and sales rep working together on Microsoft Surface to design a custom skateboard.

Samsung’s version, officially called “Samsung SUR 40 for Microsoft Surface” drops the cameras and puts all the Microsoft Surface technology inside one large — still coffee table surface sized — 40-inch LCD touch screen. The secret sauce is the “PixelSense Technology” that lets the LCD panel “see” without using a camera. Earlier this year, Microsoft explained that this means “Every pixel is acting as a camera, so the surface of the PC can actually see.” Among the things it can see is up to 50-points of simultaneous interaction. In other words, Microsoft Surface 2.0 could support a bar game with up to five — all-fingers-on — participants. Samsung SUR 40 for Microsoft Surface is, essentially, a powerful computer with table legs. Underneath the Gorilla Glass screen is an AMD Athlon™ II X2 Dual-Core Processor 2.9GHz paired with a powerful graphics processor.

Though recognized as one of Microsoft’s sexiest innovations, Microsoft Surface has never been headed for the home. Instead, it has ended up in hospitals, manufacturing, retail and casinos. Part of it could be the price, which is estimated at between $10,00 and $15,000 per unit. Update: Microsoft reps confirmed with Mashable that the price in the U.S is $8,900. Outside the U.S. “pricing will vary based on country-specific duties, taxes and fees.”

For those anxious to build custom apps for the the Samsung SUR 40, there is, naturally, a developers’ kit available for download at the Surface Developers Center. Check out our gallery from Microsoft Surface 2.0′s CES 2011 introduction and then, in the comments below, lets imagine all the cool ways we can use this innovative technology.

HP server revenue falls in turbulent quarter, Gartner says

Worldwide server revenue grew 5.2% in the third quarter but declined for Hewlett-Packard (HP), Gartner Inc. said in a report on server sales during the quarter that ended Sept. 30.

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HP's quarter was a restless one. It fired one CEO and hired another and left the market wondering whether it was going to sell or spin-off its PC division, a move it later rejected.

In this same quarter, IBM's revenue share of the worldwide server market reached $3.85 billion, a 3.5% increase from a year ago. That gave it 29.7% of the worldwide market, nudging it ahead of HP for the top spot.

HP's server revenue, just over $3.8 billion, declined 3.6% from a year ago, leaving it with 29.3% of the world's market, according to Gartner. Third place Dell, meanwhile, grew 6.3% in server revenue during the period to more than $1.9 billion; it now has 14.7% share of the worldwide market.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay who was appointed in September as HP's new CEO, told financial analysts last week that HP needs "be simpler, clearer, and more consistent -- no more surprises."

Whitman cited the importance of innovation in selling products. Pointing to HP's recent introduction of low energy servers, Whitman said the company is increasing its investment in research and development.

HP has been hurt by Oracle's decision to discontinue software development on the Itanium processor, the company acknowledged.

"Our ability to close deals has been impacted by Oracle's Itanium decision," said HP's CFO, Cathie Lesjak, said during last week's call.

Gartner said that RISC-based systems and Itanium servers declined 6.8% worldwide, but vendors overall saw revenues increase 3.5%. Oracle Corp., which picked up Sun Microsystems' SPARC line, was in fourth place in revenue on Gartner's list, with nearly $764 million in server revenue. It had 6.2% of the market, unchanged from a year ago.

When measured by server shipments, HP saw a 3.1% decline in the third quarter to 693,265 shipments. It remains the leader in that category, followed by Dell, which increased shipments by 3.2%, to 517,867, and IBM, which saw no percentage change in shipments. IBM had 287,507 shipments, according to Gartner.

Market share as measured by shipments put HP at 29.2% of the market, Dell, 21.8% and IBM, 12.1%, Gartner said.

In Western Europe, beset by a financial crisis, server sales fell nearly 5%; that decline was offset by gains in other regions, including in Eastern Europe.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said that he can't definitely attribute HP's server revenue decline to its board level issues, but said it is possible that some businesses held off on orders in response. He cited other issues affecting HP's server sales, namely the decline in Unix and Oracle's Itanium decision, as contributing factors as well.

Unix, RISC and Itanium server revenue for HP fell 18.5% in the quarter, while IBM revenue grew by 27%. Oracle revenue in this category fell 11.6%, according to Gartner.

Hewitt said HP's third quarter "is likely to be something of a temporary glitch" that he expects the company to move past.

Oracle: HP paying Intel to keep Itanium going

Hewlett-Packard has secretly contracted with Intel to keep making Itanium processors so that HP can maintain the appearance that "a dead microprocessor is still alive", and make money from its locked-in Itanium customer base and take business away from Oracle's Sun servers, Oracle said in a court filing on Friday.

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The market has never been told that Itanium lives on because HP is paying Intel to keep it going, Oracle said. Intel's independent business judgement would have killed off Itanium years ago, it added.

HP however described the filing as a "desperate delay tactic designed to extend the paralyzing uncertainty in the marketplace" that it said was created when Oracle announced in March, 2011, in a breach of contract, that "it would no longer support HP's Itanium platform".

HP has made statements to the marketplace to the effect that Intel's commitment to Itanium is its own, based on its normal calculations for investing in processors that it believes have a future, Oracle said in a filing before the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Santa Clara.

A public redacted version of the filing was made available to The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog. Intel said it is not a party to the lawsuit, and therefore does not have any comment on it. "Intel does not comment on commercial agreements that we may or may not have with our customers," the chip giant said in an e-mailed statement.

Oracle also claimed that HP had kept secret from the market, but revealed in a filing two days previously, that HP and Intel have a contractual commitment that Itanium will continue through the next two generations of microprocessors.

HP's strategy behind its "false statements" about Intel's support for Itanium was to take away business from Oracle Sun, and "reap lucrative revenues from the locked-in Itanium customer base using HP's HP-UX operating system on Itanium servers", as the company gets few service contracts on operating systems like Linux that run on x86 processors, Oracle said.

Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems last year.

HP filed a suit in June over Oracle's decision to stop developing software for the Itanium processor, the chip used in HP's high-end servers, claiming that Oracle's decision violates "legally binding commitments" that it made to HP and the companies' 140,000 joint customers.

Oracle said at the time that HP tricked it into signing an agreement last September to continue its support for Itanium, even though HP knew of an Intel plan to discontinue Itanium. HP already knew all about Intel's plans to discontinue Itanium, and HP was concerned about what would happen when Oracle found out about that plan, Oracle said in a statement in June.

As Oracle well knows, HP and Intel have a contractual commitment to continue to sell mission-critical Itanium processors to customers through the next two generations of microprocessors, thus ensuring the availability of Itanium through at least the end of the decade, HP said in a statement.

"The fact remains that Oracle's decision to cut off support for Itanium was an illicit business strategy it conjured to try to force Itanium customers into buying Sun servers -- and destroy choice in the marketplace," HP said.

Court rules that HP's Hurd probe document can remain secret

A document tied to an internal Hewlett-Packard sexual harassment investigation of former CEO Mark Hurd will remain sealed, according to a ruling handed down this week by the Delaware Supreme Court.

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HP shareholder Ernesto Espinoza had filed a lawsuit seeking to inspect the document, which was prepared by the law firm Covington and Burling on HP's behalf.

The Delaware Chancery Court had already ruled against Espinoza on grounds his need to see the document wasn't sufficient enough to override "attorney-client privilege and work product immunity protections," the state supreme court said in its ruling, which was handed down Monday. "We affirm, but on the alternative ground that Espinoza has not shown that the Covington Report is essential to his stated purpose, which is to investigate possible corporate wrongdoing."

Hurd resigned from HP in August 2010 and also reached a confidential settlement with a former HP contractor, Jodie Fisher. Shortly thereafter, he took a job as co-president of Oracle.

Although the internal HP investigation did not conclude Hurd was guilty of sexually harassing Fisher, it found he had broken HP's business conduct standards and uncovered a "systematic" series of inaccurate expense reports meant to cover up his relationship with her, the ruling added.

Hurd received a lucrative severance package from HP. Espinoza had argued that if HP's board had reason to fire Hurd "for cause," then the payments shouldn't have been made, the court said.

A Secure Network for Security Experts

Portable Security System from Cisco Will Protect Global Conference Network

A conference that attracts top security professionals from around the world is very tempting to hackers. Unless properly secured, the conference network could be vulnerable to attacks intended to disrupt the conference activity or to access sensitive information on participants’ computers.

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These threats will be considerably reduced in the network that Cisco is building for the annual international security conference hosted by the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) on June 21–22, 2007 in Seville, Spain. Cisco is building and managing this network free of charge for FIRST, which is a nonprofit organization for incident response teams from government, business, and education organizations worldwide.

Traveling Security System

Cisco will monitor network performance and security with a new, portable system developed by the Cisco Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT). This traveling “system in a box” includes power equipment and the following network elements:

Two Cisco Catalyst Series 3750 switches for wired network connectivity
Multiple Cisco Aironet 1240 AG Series wireless access points using Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2) for authentication and encryption of wireless sessions
The Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance (IPS Edition), which provides capabilities for firewall, intrusion detection and prevention, and secure VPN access
The Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System (MARS) appliance, which performs security monitoring by correlating events reported by the network and security elements

All of these products are installed in a standard 19-inch rack that is mounted on compression shocks and brackets in a portable container. The container is hardened to prevent damage during shipping and has wheels for easy movement. “At the conference site, we will just need to connect the Ethernet cables, then we can immediately start monitoring the network activity and security,” says Gavin Reid, manager of the Cisco CSIRT team.

Threats that can be detected by this portable system include network intrusion attempts, viruses, events that trigger a security alert on the Cisco ASA appliance or Cisco Catalyst switches, and traffic flows that indicate anomalies. “We will be monitoring for suspicious activity and if found, we will be able to block it very quickly by using the capabilities in our traveling security system,” says Reid.

“Network connections at conferences can be haphazard, which is a concern for security professionals who must be able to securely connect to their enterprise networks while away from the office,” says Martin Nystrom, a Cisco CSIRT security engineer. “With the Cisco network and security capabilities at the FIRST conference, participants can be more confident in the security and reliability of their network connections.”

“Ready-to-Go” Network Security for Events and Emergency Response

Cisco plans to use this portable security system at other events, both public conferences and internal company meetings that are held at locations not connected to the Cisco network. “The equipment rack and shipping container have the size and flexibility to incorporate different devices as needed for each event or location where the portable system will be used,” explains Chris Fry, Cisco network security engineer. “For example, the system can contain only security and monitoring devices when it will be used in a location that already has a network.”

Adds Nystrom, “A portable network and security system can also be used by enterprises to respond to emergency situations or to deploy in advance as a preparedness measure. With all elements in one portable case, a network team can quickly deploy the system during an incident.”

About the Computer Security Incident Response Team

The Cisco CSIRT reduces the risk of loss as a result of security incidents for Cisco-owned businesses. CSIRT regularly engages in proactive threat assessment, mitigation planning, incident detection and response, incident trending with analysis, and design of the incident analysis and response portion of the Cisco network security architecture.

Court rules that HP's Hurd probe document can remain secret

A document tied to an internal Hewlett-Packard sexual harassment investigation of former CEO Mark Hurd will remain sealed, according to a ruling handed down this week by the Delaware Supreme Court.

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HP shareholder Ernesto Espinoza had filed a lawsuit seeking to inspect the document, which was prepared by the law firm Covington and Burling on HP's behalf.

The Delaware Chancery Court had already ruled against Espinoza on grounds his need to see the document wasn't sufficient enough to override "attorney-client privilege and work product immunity protections," the state supreme court said in its ruling, which was handed down Monday. "We affirm, but on the alternative ground that Espinoza has not shown that the Covington Report is essential to his stated purpose, which is to investigate possible corporate wrongdoing."

Hurd resigned from HP in August 2010 and also reached a confidential settlement with a former HP contractor, Jodie Fisher. Shortly thereafter, he took a job as co-president of Oracle.

Although the internal HP investigation did not conclude Hurd was guilty of sexually harassing Fisher, it found he had broken HP's business conduct standards and uncovered a "systematic" series of inaccurate expense reports meant to cover up his relationship with her, the ruling added.

Hurd received a lucrative severance package from HP. Espinoza had argued that if HP's board had reason to fire Hurd "for cause," then the payments shouldn't have been made, the court said.

Apple picks Sharp, dumps Samsung for iPad 3

The Samsung-Apple [AAPL] relationship seems on the rocks, with Apple shifting display production to Sharp, taking advantage of new and potentially cheaper production processes as it readies manufacturing for the iPad 3, iPhone 5 and in future, an Apple television, says Jefferies analyst, Peter Misek.

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Sharp and Apple

Digitimes last week made the claim that Sharp has begun manufacturing for Apple. Today that's confirmed in a fresh research note from Misek.

"We believe Apple has shifted display production and that Sharp has now become a large panel supplier, based on our checks. We believe that the Gen 6 Kameyama facility has been exclusively taken over for Apple purposes with Apple purchasing $500 million to $1 billion of equipment for the manufacturing of iPad 3 and iPhone 5 LTE displays," he said.

Then it gets interesting:

The analyst thinks Sharp has already begun iPad 3 display production (two weeks ago), and adds that the display tech achieved will allow for HD resolution screens on the iPad 3, which he suggests may ship in March. The analyst also thinks Sharp's plant will be used for iPhone 5 production.

Introducing IGZO

The adopted display tech is based on IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) processes, which offer near-OLED power consumption, is cheaper to make and only 25 percent thicker than displays made using OLED technology. This technology depends on oxide-material-based thin-film transistors, which enables manufacturing advantages.

The analyst has a host of interesting details on the new process, for example: "He believes that Apple and Sharp will jointly develop OLED panels for use in the iPhone and iPad within the next one to two years."

He describes a new printing technology Sharp and Apple have that enables OLED to be printed onto a film that's later stuck to the glass, boosting display yields to a "tremendous" degree.

Why is it less expensive?

Because it produces displays with similar performance to that of LCD, but which can be mass produced on existing amorphous-silicon TFT-LCD production lines. The IGZO transistors feature electron mobility 20-30 times higher than that of amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors, this report claims.

"The IGZO LCD panel’s performance outclasses anything attainable with conventional amorphous-silicon TFT panels," said Shuji Sako, deputy group general manager of Sharp’s Display Device Business Group.

Feeling the pain

Piling on even more agony on Apple's flailing tablet competitors, Misek also warns that Apple may intend keeping the iPad 2 on the market with a lower ($100-200 less) price.

The analyst has a host of interesting details on the new process, for example: "He believes that Apple and Sharp will jointly develop OLED panels for use in the iPhone and iPad within the next one to two years."

This mother-lode of analysis keeps on giving: Misek also believes work has begun on a new Apple television, set for mid-2012 launch, with the display made at another Sharp facility and prompting panic among other TV makers, anxious to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Jaw-jaw, or war-war?

Meanwhile litigation between parties continues. This has driven the relationship between Apple and Samsung to the rocks, while the public relations fallout of all the litigation isn't really doing anyone any favors.

Manufacturers are pouring money into legal teams, consumers are becoming radicalized, variously accusing Apple of being "controlling" and Google et al of being "copycats", and manufacturers are being slowly forced to focus on price, rather than features.

Don't believe that? Consider this: the biggest-selling non-Apple iPad sold in the US in 2011 was the HP TouchPad, on strength of the $99 price HP sold the device at. Just 1.2 million non-iPads were sold this year. Apple sold 11.2 million in the last quarter.

The battle's tough and is raising a new discussion about the value of patent and IP law. Not only this, but regulators in Europe and, presumably, beyond are beginning to look into all this struggle to ascertain if there's anything anti-competitive going on. Samsung's unusual handling of 3G patents, for example.