In November ACAL Technology (partner to IMU Group Swiss) surveyed nearly 400 contacts from its franchised supply base of over 300 worldwide suppliers. The responses to the survey have been analysed and summarized for the benefit of our customers.
• 75% of responders are currently experiencing fluctuating lead-times
• 38% already have product allocation issues for areas of their portfolio
• In the next 6 months 43% expect lead-times to continue to extend by a minimum of 8 weeks
Due to the current global economy many component manufacturers are slower in increasing production capacity due to continued uncertainty in the market. These factors are expected to force prices to climb and further lead-time extensions.
Over the last three months global pricing has increased in some product areas of the components market by nearly 24%. During the last quarter average prices have increased by 1.6% as shown in New Electronics November issue of ‘Marketwatch’ which showed 82% of the products tracked had experienced price increases when compared to prior month.
ACAL Technology continues it’s commitment to inventory and will continue to invest, in addition ACAL is also working with many of its partners to provide services reducing lead-times in the inventory cycle.
With all of the conditions that we are currently prevailing ACAL is recomending it's customers to secure inventory to ensure production is not affected by changes in the market.
For further information on how ACAL can support you in the current market
please complete the form below.
2009/12/08
Industrialisation of Hacking Will Dominate The Next Decade
Imperva delineates five key security trends Organisations will face during the next ten years
London, 08 December 2009: As we approach the dawn of a new decade, battle lines are firmly drawn with Organisation’s squaring up to Cyber Criminals. Imperva, the Data Security leader, predicts five key security trends to watch for over the next ten years:
The industrialisation of hacking - Clear definitions of roles are developing within the hacking community forming a supply chain that starkly resembles that of drug cartels. The weapons of choice will be automated tools applied through botnets. Imperva recently tracked and analysed a compromise that affected hundreds of servers. The scale of this attack, and others like it, is enormous and would not be achievable without total automation.
A move from application to data security as cyber-criminals look for new ways to bypass existing security measures and focus on obtaining valuable information.
Increasing attacks through social network sites where vulnerable and less technically savvy populations are susceptible to phishing attacks and malware infection.
An increase in credential theft/grabbing attacks. As the face value of individual credit card records and personal identity records decreases (due to massive data breaches) attackers look at more profitable targets. Obtaining application credentials presents an up sell opportunity as they provide a greater immediate value to stolen data consumers up the food chain.
A move from reactive to proactive security as organisations move from sitting back and waiting to be breached, to actively seeking holes and plugging them as well as trying to anticipate attacks before they come to realization.
London, 08 December 2009: As we approach the dawn of a new decade, battle lines are firmly drawn with Organisation’s squaring up to Cyber Criminals. Imperva, the Data Security leader, predicts five key security trends to watch for over the next ten years:
The industrialisation of hacking - Clear definitions of roles are developing within the hacking community forming a supply chain that starkly resembles that of drug cartels. The weapons of choice will be automated tools applied through botnets. Imperva recently tracked and analysed a compromise that affected hundreds of servers. The scale of this attack, and others like it, is enormous and would not be achievable without total automation.
A move from application to data security as cyber-criminals look for new ways to bypass existing security measures and focus on obtaining valuable information.
Increasing attacks through social network sites where vulnerable and less technically savvy populations are susceptible to phishing attacks and malware infection.
An increase in credential theft/grabbing attacks. As the face value of individual credit card records and personal identity records decreases (due to massive data breaches) attackers look at more profitable targets. Obtaining application credentials presents an up sell opportunity as they provide a greater immediate value to stolen data consumers up the food chain.
A move from reactive to proactive security as organisations move from sitting back and waiting to be breached, to actively seeking holes and plugging them as well as trying to anticipate attacks before they come to realization.
2009/12/06
What is the Gap?
What is the Gap?
There is often a stark contrast in the perception of sales effectiveness and sales productivity between the business owner and the sales manager or sales team. We call this contrast “The Gap”.
Case Study:
During a recent meeting with a Business Owner and his sales director, we gave each of them a blank piece of paper and asked them, independently of one another, to rate the overall effectiveness (ability to sell) of their sales team on a scale of 1-10. The President wrote down a 3, and the sales manager wrote down a 9! In other words, the business owner thought the sales team was doing very poorly while the sales manager thought it was functioning at almost optimal levels. With this sales manager’s mind set, what do you think that company’s potential for growth was? With this mind set do you think this sales manager has any incentive to raise the bar?
This gap in perception of sales effectiveness goes to the root cause of sales and sales management failure. Change will not occur until a business or individual comes to the conclusion that status quo is more financially detrimental than change itself. Although the company cited here had spent time and money on boot camps, one-day seminars and short-term motivational programs, the sales manager did not see any reason to change and as such made little effort to reinforce the training (change) provided, as such the business owner had wasted money training his sales team. The sales manager also had no “incentive” to change when he felt things were about as good as they could get. Remember you cannot change results until you change routines and you cannot change a routine until you first change the person’s mind.
For details on enhancing sales performance: http://www.ceosalesolution.com/webinar.html
The First Step in overcoming Sales Ineffectiveness:
The Gap is present in a great number of sales organizations today. Change does not take place until the one with the most to gain and the most to lose (The Business Owner or President) concludes that things are not good enough. Some take back control by implementing and enforcing change. Others merely rely on hope. They hope that everything they have no control over may change, such as the economy or the sales superstar who has eluded them may come knocking! Stop relying on hope and make a decision to take back control over the engine of your organization: the sales department!
Please visit http://www.ceosalesolution.com/webinar.html for details on enhancing your sales performance results.
There is often a stark contrast in the perception of sales effectiveness and sales productivity between the business owner and the sales manager or sales team. We call this contrast “The Gap”.
Case Study:
During a recent meeting with a Business Owner and his sales director, we gave each of them a blank piece of paper and asked them, independently of one another, to rate the overall effectiveness (ability to sell) of their sales team on a scale of 1-10. The President wrote down a 3, and the sales manager wrote down a 9! In other words, the business owner thought the sales team was doing very poorly while the sales manager thought it was functioning at almost optimal levels. With this sales manager’s mind set, what do you think that company’s potential for growth was? With this mind set do you think this sales manager has any incentive to raise the bar?
This gap in perception of sales effectiveness goes to the root cause of sales and sales management failure. Change will not occur until a business or individual comes to the conclusion that status quo is more financially detrimental than change itself. Although the company cited here had spent time and money on boot camps, one-day seminars and short-term motivational programs, the sales manager did not see any reason to change and as such made little effort to reinforce the training (change) provided, as such the business owner had wasted money training his sales team. The sales manager also had no “incentive” to change when he felt things were about as good as they could get. Remember you cannot change results until you change routines and you cannot change a routine until you first change the person’s mind.
For details on enhancing sales performance: http://www.ceosalesolution.com/webinar.html
The First Step in overcoming Sales Ineffectiveness:
The Gap is present in a great number of sales organizations today. Change does not take place until the one with the most to gain and the most to lose (The Business Owner or President) concludes that things are not good enough. Some take back control by implementing and enforcing change. Others merely rely on hope. They hope that everything they have no control over may change, such as the economy or the sales superstar who has eluded them may come knocking! Stop relying on hope and make a decision to take back control over the engine of your organization: the sales department!
Please visit http://www.ceosalesolution.com/webinar.html for details on enhancing your sales performance results.
2009/12/01
Soyuz Lands Safely in Kazakhstan
By Marc Boucher on December 1, 2009 2:20 AM No Comments
Soyuz Leaves International Space Station and Lands Safely in Kazakhstan, SpaceRef Canada (With Video)
"Canadian Space Agency Flight Engineer Robert Thirsk, Expedition 21 Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Frank De Winne undocked their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 10:56 p.m. EST Monday and landed in Kazakhstan at 2:15 a.m. Tuesday, 1:15 p.m. local Kazakhstan time. The Soyuz spacecraft landed upright which helped the search and recovery teams extract the astronauts."
For a full details please click at the link below:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/12/soyuz-lands-saf.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nasawatch%2FAekt+%28NASA+Watch%29&utm_content=Twitter
Soyuz Leaves International Space Station and Lands Safely in Kazakhstan, SpaceRef Canada (With Video)
"Canadian Space Agency Flight Engineer Robert Thirsk, Expedition 21 Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Frank De Winne undocked their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 10:56 p.m. EST Monday and landed in Kazakhstan at 2:15 a.m. Tuesday, 1:15 p.m. local Kazakhstan time. The Soyuz spacecraft landed upright which helped the search and recovery teams extract the astronauts."
For a full details please click at the link below:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/12/soyuz-lands-saf.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nasawatch%2FAekt+%28NASA+Watch%29&utm_content=Twitter
2009/11/30
There are no too many form factors...
Luckily for the writer, his views, being on the state of embedded systems industry or on embedded technology get published and the word gets around.
Good people publish it and again good people read it. They process published opinions, forming their own. And that is how it is supposed to be.
A very well respected and read quarterly, published by established publisher in Moscow, Russia www.mka.ru "The World of Computer Controls". Its history runs for close to 20 years and is printed in Cyrillic and partly in English. It has large follow up in the country and distribution outside Russia. Millions of people read it in Russian language and the reach is wide and deep.
Reading one of recent issues (No. 3-2009) I see an article by Mr. N. Kolsky who is calling me to dispute the need for another standard looking for an application. He meant to be a microTCA, I suppose. The said standard is still, after years, looking for its big break, a project everyone seems to be talking about.
This technology, with its origins in telecommunications, where hot swap advantage, and resources management are of paramount importance. It was developed at the time where Telecoms were flushed with revenues and everyone was looking for upgrades to satisfy the need for bandwidth of the Dot Com Bubble. After its bust on 2000, everything changed and a very nice technology began looking for another life in industry and in automation. Its derivative microTCA, was even a candidate into military applications for a while until it has decided on VPX instead.
The resources management is complex to begin with. Making smallish projects uneconomical or too complex. Larger projects involving large development teams use the resources management to their advantages, but overall costs are high making the supply chain pathologically crippled. Distributors are being pushed out of the project, as there is no margin for them. For a vendor each project becomes a Key Account.
In the same issue my dear friend is quoted in another article, titled "The invasion of the form factor" which exactly enhances my sentiment. Ray Alderman is explaining why every vendor tries to lock his End User into a closed technology.
The question Mr. Kolsky should be asking is not "are there too many form factors or not enough"? No one can decide how many standards are coming to the market. Simply it is always up to a market forces that take any standard to test them to a simple equation: "Is it cheaper to use it or is it easier to use it?" Any standard that passes the test is being used luckily for hopefully a long time. Such standards are numerous, VME, cPCI and some are in use for many years and bring fortunes to its inventors.
As to the microTCA standard it got recently a xTCA denomination, that unfortunately adds precious little to reduce its cost of ownership. The future will show and soon.
We shall see
Good people publish it and again good people read it. They process published opinions, forming their own. And that is how it is supposed to be.
A very well respected and read quarterly, published by established publisher in Moscow, Russia www.mka.ru "The World of Computer Controls". Its history runs for close to 20 years and is printed in Cyrillic and partly in English. It has large follow up in the country and distribution outside Russia. Millions of people read it in Russian language and the reach is wide and deep.
Reading one of recent issues (No. 3-2009) I see an article by Mr. N. Kolsky who is calling me to dispute the need for another standard looking for an application. He meant to be a microTCA, I suppose. The said standard is still, after years, looking for its big break, a project everyone seems to be talking about.
This technology, with its origins in telecommunications, where hot swap advantage, and resources management are of paramount importance. It was developed at the time where Telecoms were flushed with revenues and everyone was looking for upgrades to satisfy the need for bandwidth of the Dot Com Bubble. After its bust on 2000, everything changed and a very nice technology began looking for another life in industry and in automation. Its derivative microTCA, was even a candidate into military applications for a while until it has decided on VPX instead.
The resources management is complex to begin with. Making smallish projects uneconomical or too complex. Larger projects involving large development teams use the resources management to their advantages, but overall costs are high making the supply chain pathologically crippled. Distributors are being pushed out of the project, as there is no margin for them. For a vendor each project becomes a Key Account.
In the same issue my dear friend is quoted in another article, titled "The invasion of the form factor" which exactly enhances my sentiment. Ray Alderman is explaining why every vendor tries to lock his End User into a closed technology.
The question Mr. Kolsky should be asking is not "are there too many form factors or not enough"? No one can decide how many standards are coming to the market. Simply it is always up to a market forces that take any standard to test them to a simple equation: "Is it cheaper to use it or is it easier to use it?" Any standard that passes the test is being used luckily for hopefully a long time. Such standards are numerous, VME, cPCI and some are in use for many years and bring fortunes to its inventors.
As to the microTCA standard it got recently a xTCA denomination, that unfortunately adds precious little to reduce its cost of ownership. The future will show and soon.
We shall see
2009/11/23
are you reading the stock market all wrong?
Are you one of the many investors waiting for the one of the following?
- The global economic recovery to be more certain
- There to be one more (at least) almighty crash
At either of these points, you'll then jump back into the market.... right?
But, what if neither of these events occur? What if the market doesn't crash and the recovery remains weak long term and the market just kind of keeps drifting up? What if this is, in fact, the new "normal"?
What if growth doesn't return to previous levels for years or even decades? Do you invest in something else? Like what, property or cash? They won't do you any good either in a low growth environment. Do you keep sitting on the sidelines while your cash is worn down by inflation and taxation? Sitting in cash is the worst possible solution - it's negative thinking. Oh, sure, it's safe, but so is staying in bed or not going outside. You won't get hit by a bus if you stay inside. Safe options are always good short term, but bad long term.
While the current stock market has had a great run since March, many investors who have been waiting for the two events I mentioned above are wondering what to do now. They probably feel they have missed the boat... and to a great extent they have. They completely misread the situation, but all is not lost.
There is still a huge amount of money to be made in this market. While my Trident Confidential Portfolio has made close to 110% this year so far, I honestly can't see why I won't keep up my long term average of around 90%pa in 2010. I know that's a bold statement, but negative thinking and nice safe options will never make you any money.
If, as I suspect, we are entering in to a new "normal" of lower and slower growth, due to the days of "debt fueled growth" being over (for the time being), then our old approach to the stock market no longer applies. We have to think differently. Buying stocks "blindly" on the basis "they used to be good" is not an "investment strategy", it's an "investment habit".
Click here for full text: http://www.tridentconfidential.com/page.php?id=9
- The global economic recovery to be more certain
- There to be one more (at least) almighty crash
At either of these points, you'll then jump back into the market.... right?
But, what if neither of these events occur? What if the market doesn't crash and the recovery remains weak long term and the market just kind of keeps drifting up? What if this is, in fact, the new "normal"?
What if growth doesn't return to previous levels for years or even decades? Do you invest in something else? Like what, property or cash? They won't do you any good either in a low growth environment. Do you keep sitting on the sidelines while your cash is worn down by inflation and taxation? Sitting in cash is the worst possible solution - it's negative thinking. Oh, sure, it's safe, but so is staying in bed or not going outside. You won't get hit by a bus if you stay inside. Safe options are always good short term, but bad long term.
While the current stock market has had a great run since March, many investors who have been waiting for the two events I mentioned above are wondering what to do now. They probably feel they have missed the boat... and to a great extent they have. They completely misread the situation, but all is not lost.
There is still a huge amount of money to be made in this market. While my Trident Confidential Portfolio has made close to 110% this year so far, I honestly can't see why I won't keep up my long term average of around 90%pa in 2010. I know that's a bold statement, but negative thinking and nice safe options will never make you any money.
If, as I suspect, we are entering in to a new "normal" of lower and slower growth, due to the days of "debt fueled growth" being over (for the time being), then our old approach to the stock market no longer applies. We have to think differently. Buying stocks "blindly" on the basis "they used to be good" is not an "investment strategy", it's an "investment habit".
Click here for full text: http://www.tridentconfidential.com/page.php?id=9
2009/11/21
CERN back in business with its Large Hadron Collider
Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN*’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o'clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.
For more click link below:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/
For more click link below:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/
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