In-Depth

Industry Watch

• 01/01/2001

BMC Software Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sun Microsystems are working together to bring to market an online service level management (SLM) learning community. The Web site features a variety of tools to help visitors understand SLM, including articles, research, an online discussion group, a list of relevant vendors, links to other Web sites and a self-assessment tool.

The online self-assessment is designed to evaluate an organization's ability to effectively provide SLM for mission-critical IT services and applications. The SLM self-assessment tool is based on extensive research gathered from surveying IT executives and administrators in North America. Research is currently underway to add additional data gathered from global organizations. Upon completion of the tools survey, users receive a personalized graphical analysis of their SLM practices.

Amdahl Corporation will provide an IT infrastructure offering for United Customer Management Solutions'(UCMS) comprehensive electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) solution that is focused on telecommunications and Internet service providers.

Amdahl will provide hardware, application hosting services, networking services, and other related support services. UCMS will provide a suite of end-to-end eCRM solutions through business process outsourcing, or Application Service Provisioning (ASP) delivery models based on clients' specific needs.

Both companies are currently implementing this joint solution at DSLnetworks, a wholesale provider of broadband Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) Internet connectivity solutions.

Amdahl will provide the full IT infrastructure to support UCMS' eCRM solution for DSLnetworks, which will include Web-based customer care, billings, order management, provisioning, technical support, debt management, revenue enhancement and churn management.

Nanotechnology's highest honors were awarded to researchers at Georgia Tech, HP Labs and UCLA for major advances in the ability to build useful devices and structures with atomic precision. Two prizes are given annually by the Foresight Institute, one for theoretical work and one for experimental achievement.

Georgia Tech physicist Uzi Landman won this year's Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Theoretical) for his pioneering work in computational materials science for nanostructures.

The Experimental Prize went to the multidisciplinary team of chemist R. Stanley Williams and computer scientist Philip Kuekes, both of HP Labs in Palo Alto, along with chemist James Heath of UCLA. They were cited for building a molecular switch, a major step toward their long-term goal of building entire memory chips that are just a hundred nanometers wide, smaller than a bacterium.

Duke University researchers will utilize a powerful IBM SP supercomputer to create models of the heart that they hope will lead to uncovering causes and developing treatments for life-threatening heart conditions. The models will be used to study electrical currents flowing through the heart and nerve tissue.

"Using the IBM SP, the Duke team of researchers can access the horsepower needed for our computationally intense heart modeling," says Dr. John Pormann, Research Associate, Duke University. "The simulations made possible on the supercomputer can give the researchers insight into the problems that generate heart irregularities. These simulations can help provide additional information that is difficult to obtain in the lab."

Irregular heartbeats and heart attacks, the leading cause of death in the United States and abroad, are a result of improper electrical impulses flowing through the heart. Complex mathematical computer models, based on lab data, recreate the heart's reaction to various electrical stimuli. Using the SP supercomputer, researchers can change the model's variables, run simulations and determine the heart's reaction to different electrical stimuli.

For realistic computer modeling of the heart, Duke researchers send huge amounts of data to multiple, ultra-fast processors in the IBM SP supercomputer. The IBM SP receives and runs multiple researchers' simulations concurrently on different processors. Researchers can simulate parts of the heart, comparing how specific deviations affect the heart function and then incrementally add new complexities to their simulation. Results from various simulations can be compared by running simulations against each other.

As a result of this research, the Duke Computational Electrophysiology Group has developed realistic computer models depicting normal and irregular heart functions.

For more information, visit www.ee.duke. edu/~jpormann/CardioWave.html.