IBM to Add Software for Apple Devices

E-mail software from IBM Corp. will be available on Apple Inc. iPhones and iPod Touch devices under a new partnership that brings together two big rivals of Microsoft Corp.

IBM plans a formal announcement of the Lotus Notes e-mail package for Apple's portable devices at its Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla., next week. The software, which requires use of IBM's Domino e-mail server program, will be free for users who already have a Lotus Web-access license and start at $39 per year for new users.

IBM also plans to release Lotus Notes and the free Lotus Symphony "productivity" package - which includes documents, spreadsheets and other Microsoft Office-like software - for Apple's Macintosh computers.

With these moves, IBM is trying to find more avenues for its software and take advantage of Apple's natural affinity for Microsoft alternatives.

The iPhone already can connect users to Web-based e-mail services and to corporate e-mail sent over Microsoft's Exchange e-mail platform, though businesses rarely enable the setting that makes it possible.

If IBM, which counts 135 million Lotus users worldwide, can get companies to let their employees check Lotus e-mail on iPhones, the partnership could make Apple's gadget more competitive with Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and other business-targeted smart phones.

IBM and Apple, competitors in the early years of the PC market, traditionally have not worked closely together in software, though Apple used IBM chips in some Macs for several years until ditching them in favor of Intel Corp. processors in 2005. But now the sides appreciate that "we have a lot in common," IBM spokesman Mike Azzi said. "We're going to cross-pollinate."

One reason for the distance between the two companies is the small overlap between Mac users and the big corporate customers that commonly buy products from IBM.

Now, Apple hardware has become a broader platform with the popularity of the iPhone and Web-enabled iPod Touch devices. However, Apple has delayed fully opening the devices to third-party applications; a "software developers' kit" to enable that isn't due until next month. Apple and IBM have been working together on their own.

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IBM Posts Strong 4Q Preliminary Results

Computer server and software maker IBM said Monday its fourth-quarter earnings from continuing operations rose 24 percent from a year ago, beating Wall Street expectations by a wide margin.

The preliminary report, released in advance of its planned earnings report set for Thursday, sent its shares up 8 percent on premarket trading.

IBM said the weaker dollar helped to push revenue up 10 percent.

The company reported quarterly profit from continuing operations of $2.80 per share on revenue of $28.9 billion, easily beating Wall Street's consensus estimates of $2.60 per share on sales of $27.82 billion, according to a Thomson Financial poll.

International Business Machines Corp. said revenue grew 10 percent from the year-ago period, with 6 points of that growth related to the weaker dollar.

"The broad scope of IBM's global business - led by strong operational performance in Asia, Europe and emerging countries - drove these outstanding results," said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive.

For fiscal 2007, IBM reported earnings rose 18 percent to $7.18 per share, including a 5-cent gain on the sale of its printing systems division in the second quarter, on sales of $98.8 billion, representing 8 percent growth year-over-year.

Analysts had predicted full-year profit of $6.97 per share on revenue of $97.73 billion.

Its shares rose $7.85 to $105.52 in premarket trading.

IBM's cash balance at the end of 2007 was more than $16 billion.

The company will report full quarterly and full-year results for 2007 on Thursday.

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IBM Offers Free E-Mail Search Tool

IBM has created a free semantic e-mail search engine aimed at users of the company's Lotus Notes software and Microsoft Outlook.

The engine, called IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES), allows users to search their mail based on concepts, such as dates and phone numbers, according to IBM. It also allows searchers to define their own concepts.

Once the software is installed, it indexes and analyzes the user's e-mail store. Searches are conducted through a browser interface that delivers results through a stripped-down, Google-like interface.

Users can enter simple keyword-based queries or ones using basic natural language constructions. For example, to find e-mails from a friend named Mark Smith, you could simply enter "from Mark Smith."

But to find only the e-mails Smith sent in a certain month, a query might be constructed as "Mark from January 2007." You could find his phone number by typing "Smith's phone number."

The results don't show a list of e-mail headers or display the messages in full. Instead, the software extracts the passage it believes contains the right answer, and highlights what it deems to be the specific information requested, such as a phone number.

Users can also search for attachments, with search results providing direct links to the documents in question.

E-mail is a good target for developing a semantic search engine because users frequently repeat certain phrasings and words and repeatedly exchange the same type of information. "There is a fairly large number of things that are so e-mail specific," said Shivakumar Vaithyanathan, the project's technical lead.

Researchers in a number of IBM labs worked on the project for the past year and a half, according to Vaithyanathan. The product has been quietly available on the company's alphaWorks site for a couple of months, but only now is IBM attempting to drive widespread adoption, according to a spokeswoman.

"To be able to solve all these problems in some meaningful way, we want some feedback," Vaithyanathan said.

IBM also released the tool internally to its employees and said it has received mostly positive responses.

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India enters supercomputing race

A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world's fastest supercomputers.

Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list - which is compiled twice a year - with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.

Its Blue Gene/L supercomputer - used to ensure the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable - comes out at number one.

The Indian system - known as EKA - made it into fourth place.

The world's fastest supercomputer - BlueGene/L - has been significantly upgraded in the last six months.

It can now deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 teraflops), nearly three times faster than any other machine on the list.

Petaflop barrier

TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS IBM's BlueGene/L - 478 teraflops IBM's BlueGene/P - 167.3 teraflops SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 117.9 teraflops HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops

Second place went to another IBM system - a newer version of BlueGene/L known as BlueGene/P. The system, introduced this June is the first in a batch of IBM machines designed to operate at a petaflop and beyond.

Breaking the petaflop barrier - the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second - has long been a key milestone in supercomputing and would allow highly detailed simulations.

For example in earthquake simulations it could show building-by-building movements of regions in earthquake zones, improving future structural designs.

India has also entered the exclusive list for the first time with a Hewlett-Packard designed system that has a performance of 117.9 teraflops.

Codenamed EKA - Sanskrit for number one - it is installed at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune.

The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.

"The supercomputer system will have a direct affect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.

The next step for the system is to put more applications on it.

"While the ranking is important the more important thing is to keep on improving performance and applications," said Mr Ramadorai.

Third place on the top 500 list went to a new supercomputing centre based in New Mexico.

Fifth place went to another Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency.

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