Spar Group, a supplier of retail merchandising and other marketing services, has announced the structuring of a new joint venture in China with its new partner Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting.
Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting is a comprehensive marketing management company that provides brand communication and retail marketing management service in China.

The new joint venture will provide merchandising and marketing services and have national market presence in the country.

The new joint venture will be called SPAR (Shanghai) Marketing Management Company. Spar will own 51% of the joint venture while Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting will own 49% in accordance with the laws of China. The new company will provide merchandising and related marketing services to manufacturers and retailers throughout China.

Gary Raymond, president and CEO of Spar Group, said: “It is no secret that China is one of the fastest growing economies and most promising markets for our marketing and specialty merchandising services. We have researched diligently to find a synergistic partner to maximize the value of our presence in China and are pleased to reach an agreement with Shanghai Wedone. We believe the team at Shanghai Wedone Marketing is the optimal partner to continue our growth in China.”
From:www.americanchronicle.com

The good news: “As an industry overall, asset management remains an incredibly attractive space,” said Brent S. Beardsley, BCG partner and managing director. Operating margins, boosted by better product mix and higher AUM, were forecast for 31 to 35 percent for this year; it’s not as good as the historic peak of 40 percent back in 2006 but far better than many other businesses.

There’s still plenty of work ahead for asset managers. The report measured the value of professionally managed assets in 2009 at $52.6 trillion, up 12 percent, but only about 1 percent resulted from new net inflows. The playing field is changing.

Private investors are demanding greater transparency, particularly with hedge funds. Beardsley said some clients are telling funds they want their stakes invested separately from other pooled funds. That can drive costs up. There’s also pricing pressure; some new hedge funds are charging a 1.5 percent management fee and a 15 percent performance fee, down from the traditional 2-and-20 pricing, the BCG report says. Profits also are being pressured by the growing popularity of passive investments such as exchange traded funds, although there is “little danger” of actively managed investing falling out of favor, particularly with institutional investors, the report adds.

A range of strategies can help managers navigate the waters ahead, BCG says. A sharpened business model, “making bolder choices regarding products, target markets and distribution,” is recommended, along with considering growth opportunities abroad. Mergers and acquisitions could be worth exploring. (Aspiriant Investment Advisors said Monday it will acquire Deloitte Investment Advisors LLC, the fee-only RIA owned by Deloitte Tax LLP, in a deal expected to close in September.) But for the most part the market has languished this year. “There’s a lot of talking, but not a lot of buying,” Beardsley said. Clients tell him that attractive businesses appear priced too richly, while the less-expensive offerings don’t meet their strategic needs. Kumar believes some good M&A deals can be had. “There are economies of scale and scope to gain if you do it right,” he said, but added, “Putting people-based businesses together is never easy.”

This acquisition will boost Hewitt’s existing investment consulting capabilities in the United States and support its global growth plans. EnnisKnupp provides investment consulting services to corporations, public funds, endowments, foundations and non-for-profits.

Once this transaction is complete, Hewitt will be one of the largest providers of investment consulting services globally with nearly $3 trillion in assets under advisement.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close later this year.

Aon will pay $50 per Hewitt share, representing a 41 percent premium to Hewitt’s closing stock price of $35.40 on Friday.

Aon plans to integrate Hewitt with its existing consulting and outsourcing operations and operate the segment under the newly created Aon Hewitt brand, the company said.

“This merger will give us a broader portfolio of innovative products and services focused on what we believe are two of the most important topics in the global economy today – risk and people,” Aon chief executive Greg Case said on Monday.

Hewitt stockholders will receive $25.61 in cash and about 0.6362 percent of a share in Aon stock for each Hewitt share. The total payment will be $2.45 billion in cash and issue of 64 million shares.

The companies expect the deal to save about $355 million annually by 2013 through reduction in back-office areas and other impacts. The transaction is expected to close by mid-November.

49 percent of Aon Hewitt’s operation by revenue would be consulting, 40 percent would be benefits outsourcing and 11 percent would be from HR business process outsourcing, Aon said in a statement.

Aon expects the transaction to add to its earnings on a GAAP basis in 2012 and on an adjusted basis in 2011. Aon expects the deal to be significantly help cash earnings in 2011. Aon bought reinsurance broker Benfield Group Ltd. for $1.4 billion, or 350 pence a share, in 2008.

Credit Suisse Group AG acted as a financial adviser to Aon and Citigroup Inc. advised Hewitt on the transaction.

Hewitt helps more than 3,000 clients and serves nearly two-thirds of the FORTUNE 500. The company handles more than 117 million human resources-related customer interactions a year for nearly 16 million employees, retirees, and their families.

Shares of Aon closed at $38.34 on Friday on the NYSE.
News From:IBTIMES.COM

Millward Brown Optimor created the BrandZ Top 100, a ranking that identifies the world’s most valuable brands measured by their dollar value. Our brand ranking provides key insights and actionable information for finance, marketing and business professionals on how to manage and grow their brand assets.

Millward Brown Optimor congratulates all companies featured in this year’s BrandZ ranking: being among the world’s most valuable brands demonstrates successful business and brand management.

The 2010 BrandZ Top 100

The long-awaited recovery is now under way, but it’s a slow, painful slog that’s short on trust and confidence and long on a drumbeat of numbers that mostly shift from dreadful to less depressing. Twenty-seven months after the recession began, unemployment is stuck at 9.7%. Housing starts are dragging near half-century lows. Consumers are finally spending again, but they’re still too fearful about their jobs and homes to crowd malls and auto lots with the buoyant abandon that heralds a full-rigged revival, the kind Americans are used to.

Amazingly, as consumers struggle, U.S. corporations are staging a nearly unprecedented comeback that’s largely escaping notice. The gargantuan, dispiriting job cuts that seem to dominate the news have also been the spur for an epic resurgence in profits. For 2009, the Fortune 500 lifted earnings 335%, to $391 billion, a $301 billion jump that’s the second largest in the list’s 56-year history, approaching the increase in the robust recovery of 2003. For last year the 500 raised their return on sales from less than 1% to 4%. That’s close to the list’s 4.7% historical average.

Hence, the 500′s profits virtually returned to normal after years of extremes — bubbles in 2006 and 2007, collapse in 2008 — despite a feeble overall recovery that’s far from normal. This year’s list — reminder: the Fortune 500 ranks U.S. companies by revenue — is packed with changes that reflect and spotlight the trends reshaping corporate America. The homebuilders that occupied 14 places in 2007 and three last year, including Centex and Pulte, have all disappeared, casualties of shrinking sales. No fewer than nine newcomers from recession-resistant health care joined in 2009, among them drugmakers Genzyme (sales: $4.5 billion) and Allergan ($4.5 billion).

The fall in commodity prices removed half-a-dozen energy production, oil refining, and pipeline companies, and bumped last year’s No. 1, Exxon Mobil ($285 billion), into second place, far behind the new leader, Wal-Mart ($408 billion). The collapse in car sales pushed General Motors ($105 billion) from sixth to 15th place, the first time in the list’s history that GM didn’t make the top 10.

The rebound comes chiefly from three sectors: financial services, consumer cyclicals — items ranging from toys to furniture — and health care. In 2009 banks, securities firms, and insurance companies lowered their combined losses from a staggering $213 billion to just $20 billion. Buoyed by a government bailout, AIG swung from a loss of $99 billion in 2008 — a Fortune 500 record — to a deficit of $11 billion last year. The combined losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shrank by $15 billion to a still-huge $94 billion, as write-downs continued on subprime mortgages. By contrast, the banks and brokers, including J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs, rebounded from losses of $8.7 billion to $38 billion in profits. Write-downs on toxic securities receded, and investment-banking profits jumped, helping offset losses on credit cards and mortgages. J.P. Morgan Chase doubled earnings to $12 billion, thanks chiefly to big gains in fixed-income trading.

In consumer cyclicals, a category that could be labeled “things you’d like to buy but can put off,” companies suffered losses of $42 billion in 2008. Casino operators, electronics retailers, and auto-parts suppliers saw revenues fall faster than they could slash costs. That trend reversed in 2009. Wal-Mart managed to lift revenues, on top of a big increase in 2008, by attracting bargain-hungry customers from competitors with remodeled stores and inexpensive private-label goods, offering everything from frozen pizza to patio furniture in one stop. A single trip also meant less spending on gas. Result: Earnings surged 7.0% to $14.3 billion.

The 500′s most exceptional study in ingenuity may be Mattel, the world’s largest toymaker. In late 2008, Mattel foresaw that sales would plunge in 2009 and introduced a clench-jawed cost-cutting campaign called Global Cost Leadership. Mattel pared its professional workforce by 10%, or 1,000 employees; paid down debt to lower interest costs by $10 million; and reduced overhead by $132 million. Its revenues did drop by $487 million, or 8%. But costs fell much more, by a remarkable $669 million before tax. Mattel booked a net income increase of $149 million, or 39%.

The star of 2009 is undoubtedly health care. The sector’s earnings jumped to an all-time high of $92 billion, placing it second behind tech at $94 billion. Health-care earnings rose by $23 billion, or 33%.

The Fortune 500′s remarkable response is yet another chapter in the saga of a list that’s gone from boom to bust to almost normal, all in the space of three short years. Never has getting to “almost normal” been a bigger achievement.
From:www.fortune.com

But maybe, like many gadget lovers, you’re still debating whether you really need this new touch-screen computer from Apple.

To help you make sense of the hype, here are answers to 10 common questions about the iPad, Apple’s much-anticipated “slate” computer, which goes on sale Saturday.

Is there anything else you’d like to know? If so, please post in the comments section below and we’ll do our best to answer your questions.

1. How is the iPad different from a laptop?

The word “laptop” is getting somewhat brushed aside for a truckload of new, confusing categories.

The Apple iPad falls into the slate (some people say tablet) category of portable personal computers, because, unlike a laptop, it doesn’t have a hardware keyboard.

Another key difference: To type and to navigate through files and photos on the iPad, you touch its screen in the same way you operate an iPhone or iPod Touch. That’s possible on some laptop models, but not many.

2. How is the iPad different from e-readers like the Kindle?

Reading digital books on “e-readers” like the Amazon Kindle is becoming increasingly popular. The iPad acts like an e-reader and like a personal computer, but there are some notable differences between the two.

For one, the iPad has a color display. The Kindle, by contrast, is only black-and-white. Some people think the iPad, partly for this reason, will be popular with students who read textbooks with colorful diagrams. Others say the Kindle’s screen, which isn’t backlit, will be easier on the eyes over long periods.

There’s an aesthetic difference, too: The iPad will display books horizontally, with two pages showing, or vertically, zooming in on a single page of text. The Kindle only works in vertical mode.

Perhaps more importantly, the devices access books from different online bookstores. iPad users must buy books from Apple’s new digital bookstore, called the iBookstore. Kindle users must buy their books from Amazon.com.

3. How much does the iPad cost?

Prices range from $499 to $829. The more expensive versions have more storage space, which means you can put more music and videos on the device.

iPads that connect to the Internet with Wi-Fi only are less expensive than those that can connect through Wi-Fi and through AT&T’s mobile Internet network.

4. Do you have to sign-up for an AT&T contract when you buy the iPad?

You don’t have to buy an AT&T mobile Internet contract to purchase the iPad.

If you buy a Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad and have a Wi-Fi connection at home, or you want to use the iPad primarily at coffee shops or public places that have wireless Internet connections, then you probably won’t have to deal with AT&T at all.

Pricier versions of the iPad are able to connect to AT&T’s mobile 3G network, allowing them to browse the Web from many more locations.

Surprisingly, you don’t need a contract with AT&T to use this service, either.

Users can pay by the month and cancel at any time without penalty, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the iPad unveiling. The unlimited data plan with AT&T costs $29.99 per month.

The Wi-Fi-enabled iPads go on sale on Saturday. The AT&T-enabled iPads will ship in late April, according to the online Apple store.

4. If there’s no keyboard, how do you type on the iPad?

Instead of being a piece of plastic with physical keys, the iPad’s keyboard is a graphic that pops up on the device’s touch-sensitive screen — an interface that will be familiar to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

iPad users type by touching pictures of keys on the screen. The iPad keyboard is about the same size as the one on your desk, but you can’t feel the keys.

When he unveiled the device in January, Jobs said the iPad is “a dream to type on.” But some bloggers, including this writer, have complained that the iPad’s touch-screen keyboard is difficult to use.

5. Can you create documents, spreadsheets and presentations with the iPad?

Apple created a new suite of “apps” specifically for the iPad. These iWork programs, which cost $9.99 each, let users create documents, edit spreadsheets and create business presentations from the iPad.

It’s unclear how easy these programs will be to use. Some reviewers say it’s easy enough to compose business documents on the iPad. Others say serious users will need another computer to be productive.

The iPad has a Wi-Fi connection, which, in theory, could be used for printing documents wirelessly through your printer. There is some debate online about what apps will perform this function.

6. Can you view any Web site on the iPad?

A certain format of online video, called Flash, does not play on the Apple iPad.

While there are some workarounds for this, many Web sites are redesigning themselves, using a type of code called HTML5, so they will work on the iPad.

That code allows video display on the device, but you may notice some sites, including this one, will have holes because the iPad doesn’t support Flash video.

7. Will the iPad replace my current computer? Or do you need both?

Some technology writers and critics say the iPad is an all-in-one machine. Others argue that it’s more of a portable accessory, and that most computer users need a desktop or laptop computer in addition to an iPad.

What works for you really depends on what you use your computers for. If you spend a lot of time typing or creating things with your computer, it may be easier to use a laptop. If you just want to surf the Web, read books, play games, watch movies or send an occasional short e-mail, the iPad might work.

Apple and others sell keyboards that can be attached to the device in case you need to write a longer e-mail and don’t want to fiddle with the touch-screen keyboard.

8. Is the iPad lighter and smaller than other laptops or e-readers?

The iPad will be about a half-inch thick and weigh about 1½ pounds.

Its screen is 9.7 inches across, when measured diagonally.

That’s smaller and lighter than some laptops. A 10-inch netbook from Dell is similar in size but weighs about a pound more.

Amazon’s Kindle DX is slimmer than the iPad, at only a third of an inch thick, and it weighs slightly less: 1.2 pounds, according to Amazon.

Its screen is the same size as the iPad’s, but it doesn’t display color.

9. Can you subscribe to newspapers and magazines on the iPad?

Some magazines and newspapers have said they hope the iPad will help save their struggling industries. A number of them have reformatted their publications for the iPad’s screen and are offering new digital subscription plans.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, will charge $17.99 per month for an iPad subscription to its newspaper.

10. Are there iPad alternatives?

Apple is not the only computer maker offering a slate device. Some are on the market now and others will come out soon.

HP briefly showed off its slate computer before an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Dell has announced plans to make a personal computer in the slate category.

Viliv and Asus have tablets on the market, too.
From:CNN

Microsoft’s Silverlight media player has, with version 4 due next month, gone from being closed source but able to work on other platforms – the Mac – to being increasingly tied to Windows.

An up-coming feature called COM Automation has been introduced that potential lets content in Silverlight and Silverlight applications work with documents in Microsoft’s Office stored on a PC. Also, COM Automation could access other system capabilities like a USB security card reader.

COM is a Microsoft architecture, not found on the Mac, so this means Silverlight is beginning to be built by Microsoft to give Windows a leg up over the competition.

Brian Goldfarb, lead product manager for web platform tools, defended the decision last year.

“[Mac and Windows Silverlight] are on a par in every other respect. It’s important to give developers choice. We also want to have the option to light up the platform,” he told Reg reviewer Tim Anderson.

Now, though, it seems things are changing and Microsoft might actually want Silverlight to run equally well on the Mac, either through its own engineering efforts or by working with others.

Goldfarb, fresh from Microsoft’s recent Mix 2010 conference where the HTML 5 news was announced, told The Reg that Microsoft is “looking at other ways to extend Silverlight to other platforms”. Microsoft is looking at features that are specific to those particular platforms and that could mean support in Silverlight for AppleScript or shell extensions.

“We are waiting for customers to give us some use cases,” Goldfarb said.

For the Linux and Unix crowd, we already have Moonlight – the Novell-sponsored project led by Miguel de Icaza. Moonlight spun up when Microsoft made it clear it didn’t have the “resources” to target platforms other than Windows. Moonlight is now on version 2.0 but does not implement all features of the main Silverlight. Also, it’s only just catching up to the current Silverlight 3.0, as Microsoft prepares to drop version 4.0.

Microsoft has supported Moonlight because it potentially seeds the market and creates interest in Silverlight. If Goldfarb is right, then it looks like Microsoft believes Silverlight on Mac can also play a part in this. While that will suit Microsoft’s goals it should also mean that Silverlight on Mac avoids the kind of second-class status Office for Mac has endured. ®
From:http://www.theregister.co.uk

The background to this is the continuing and dramatic rise in the amount of semi- and unstructured information. This leads to a sheer storage capacity problem and to infrastructure problems, particularly when organisations need to respond to sudden and unpredictable changes in IT demand.

Dell is responding to that by increasing the ability for its customers to virtualise their IT environments, manage them more efficiently with infrastructure products, and equip their data centres with both servers and storage better suited to what it calls the virtual era.

The Reg covers the server, cloud and infrastructure parts of today’s Dell announcement set elsewhere; here we concentrate on the storage which focuses on the efficient storage of billions of files and objects.

Dell is introducing three new storage product sets: the DX object store; DD deduplication systems; and the NS unified file and block storage systems Both the DX and NS products are OEM’d from EMC whereas the DX is not. It appears that Dell decided not to take EMC’s Centera object storage product set.

DX Object Storage Platform
Paul Prince, a director in Dell’s chief technology officer’s organisation, said this was like iSCSI. There Dell saw a strongly growing market and decided it needed its own IP. Consequently it went out and bought EqualLogic.

Dell thinks that the growth in unstructured data will mean that potentially billions of files need to be stored in a searchable address space and that object storage is the best way to do that. It says DX customers will be able to access, store and distribute the billions of files or other digital content, from archiving all the way to the cloud.

The DX Object Storage Platform is a coming product and details are somewhat scarce. We know that it is based on one or more Cluster Services Node (CSN) management front end connected by 1GBitE to DX6012s storage nodes which can be added and added to build multi-petabyte storage capabilities with no architectural limit on the number of nodes.

The base DX technology components come from unidentified partners; Caringo thought to be one, with Dell taking the best of breed parts and integrating them to produce its own object storage technology. Data is stored with metadata which is used to automatically manage the length and location of content storage. The company did not say if it was used hash addressing to do this.

The CSN boxes store an index or map of all the objects in the storage nodes and they store the objects in a single flat and potentially enormous address space. They are 2U enclosures with a single X86 CPU, six hard drives offering up to 6TB max capacity, 12GB of RAM, and 4 1GbitE ports. They have redundant power supplies and an iDRAC Express management card.

These CSNs have the centralised management interface, carry out network services and contain a content router

The DX6012s SNs also come in 2U enclosures, this time with up to 12 hard drives offering 3,6, 12 or 24TB of capacity. There is a single X86 CPU and 3, 6, 12 or 24GB of RAM plus two 2GbitE ports and redundant power supplies.

The nodes are self-managing and carry out load-balancing, storage optimisation and power conservation. They also carry out background data integrity health checks on their stored content, both original data and replicas.

The DX 6000 has policy-based replication to geographically separate sites, with policies driven by administrator-defined object metadata. Multiple replication and distribution topologies are supported such as 1:1, 1:Many, Many:1, Many:Many.

Dell says the DX system will feature automated, policy-based retention and deletion and be affordable. It will offer various data types: immutable, mutable, and conditional mutable.

The DX is claimed to be highly expandable through a peer-scaling design. There will be multiple options for scaling capacity. It will also, Dell claims, be possible to seamlessly add future storage technologies.

This is likely to be made possible by the storage nodes having standard interfaces to the management nodes. Dell did confirm that SATA drives will be used in the storage nodes but said that other drive types or storage tiers, such as Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) would be available as well.

The interconnect between the storage and management nodes was not identified and nor was the general speeds and feeds type information. Dell says that setup will use wizards and will not require LUNs or RAID groups. The hardware is industry-standard, and it’s the DX software where the value and IP lies.

It’s likely that some kind of data moving function across storage tiers will be provided.

Dell is working to build an eco-system of horizontal and vertical software suppliers to provide data ingest and access capabilities that use the DX as their object storage platform. The base protocol is HTTP and Dell is making its DX APIs available in a Software Development Kit (SDK) to partners, such as Acuo, Bridgehead, CommVault, EMC, Iron Mountain, Symantec and others.
From: Channel & Register

1. Facebook
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Google
5. Huawei
6. First Solar
7. PG&E
8. Novartis
9. Walmart
10. HP
11. Hulu
12. Netflix
13. Nike
14. Intel
15. Spotify
16. BYD
17. Cisco Systems
18. IBM
19. GE
20. Disney
21. Gilt Groupe
22. Indian Premier League
23. PatientsLikeMe
24. Grey New York
25. BMW DesignworksUSA
26. Synthetic Genomics
27. FiLife
28. Frito-Lay
29. Alibaba
30. MITRE
31. HTC
32. Diller Scofidio + Renfro
33. Firstborn
34. Sportvision
35. Ideo
36. Samsung
37. Glam Media
38. Ngmoco
39. VNL
40. Aldi Süd
41. Fast Retailing
42.Huayi Brothers
43. Athenahealth
44. MVRDV
45. Alstom
46. Quantcast
47. Good Guide
48. Microsoft
49. Politico
50. Twitter