IBM researchers are counting on a 40-year-old technology to keep modern, state-of-the-art data centers running cool and allow companies to squeeze more computing power from the electricity they consume. At the data-center level, Roger Schmidt, chief thermal architect and distinguished engineer at IBM’s server and workstation division sees an expanded role for water cooling as a means to bring heat levels down. Water cooling, which uses small pipes filled with distilled or deionized water to dissipate heat, was first used by IBM to cool mainframe computers during the 1960s.

This is the first of four articles Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard has written on Lotusphere and all the new Lotus announcements. In this article, he talks about the event itself, and provide some of the broad strokes of what was announced. In the next three articles, he’ll go in-depth on each of the key announcements and provide you with some perspective and analysis.

Read this DominoPower article.

IBM sold off a chunk of its stake in Lenovo Group, leading the world’s third-largest PC vendor to temporarily suspend trading of its shares in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Lenovo spokeswoman Angela Lee said IBM had informed the company it planned to sell a large block of shares but had not provided specific details of the transaction. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lenovo Group has signed a five-year deal with IBM to provide services and support to its customers. The deal, outlined in a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange Tuesday, could be worth up to US$245 million for IBM over the term of the contract. Lenovo plans to expand the services it offers customers with the addition of "fee-based technical support, installation, deployment and other PC-related services," the filing said.

Members of Trusted Computing Group, a 170-member organization dedicated to developing trusted computing standards, touted Trusted Platform Modules, to an attentive, if sometimes skeptical, audience at the RSA Conference on Feb. 5. Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates and author of a white paper titled "Trusted Computing is Real and It’s Here," sought to answer critics of TPMs who say there is a lack of interest in TPMs from users despite a push from vendors.

Configuration audit and control provider Tripwire on Feb. 5 gave IT a better handle on controlling configuration changes that can cause outages or compliance issues when it launched the latest release of its Tripwire Enterprise software. The configuration monitoring and control software is designed to help IT track changes made outside of existing policies to help reduce the amount of downtime and security vulnerabilities caused by unauthorized changes.

SanDisk introduced the TrustWatch integrated suite of applications that transform off-the-shelf USB flash drives from a security threat to a competitive advantage in the enterprise. TrustWatch is built around a secure network appliance and a management console, through which IT administrators can easily configure and deploy secured USB flash drives, while preventing information from being copied to unapproved devices. The TrustWatch solution allows the IT department to select from SanDisk’s line of standard flash drives for issue to employees.

Triggering the start of a new evolution in the company’s award-winning workstation line, Alienware has introduced its most powerful workstation to date: the MJ-12 8550i powered by the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series. As the first Alienware workstation to offer quad-core processing, the new MJ-12 8550i represents the initial offering in a series of upcoming workstation solutions from Alienware during the first quarter of 2007. The Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series injects the MJ-12 8550i with 50 percent greater performance than previous-generation Intel Xeon processors. This helps Alienware’s latest workstation deliver unparalleled performance-per-watt and expanded virtualization capabilities, great news for demanding creative professionals like CAD engineers and digital content creators.

eCube Systems, a leader in legacy middleware evolution, announced that it has achieved IBM Advanced Business Partner status based on its excellent history with IBM Systems and Technology Group creating legacy evolution solutions for the CICS family of products and legacy middleware. This accomplishment reflects eCube’s commitment to provide customers with application development and modernization solutions for IBM’s key markets in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and the public sector.

D-Link is shipping a new mobile Wi-Fi router that can work anywhere there is a cell signal that’s data capable. The new DIR-450 is designed to accept an EVDO card from carriers such as Sprint, Verizon or Alltel. To make it work, you plug the device into a source of 12-volt power (including from an external AC power supply) and insert the wireless data card. Once that happens, you’ll have a mobile Wi-Fi network. A second version, the DIR-451, due out later this quarter, will support UMTS and HSDPA devices from Cingular, T-Mobile and others. The DIR-451 is designed to work globally.