Biggest server market surge since 2000

There are signs of life in the server industry, reports The Register, as almost all major vendors enjoyed double-digit growth in the second quarter. Quoting preliminary numbers from Gartner, the site reports a total of 1.28 billion servers were shipped worldwide in Q2. This marks a 17.6% gain over the same quarter a year ago, and the largest rise in shipments since 2000.

The gains are good news for vendors, although Gartner warns that the most recent data compares to a slow quarter in 2002.

HP continues its reign in worldwide sales, with 376 100 units shipped, but Dell and IBM are closing in. Dell moved 261 600 boxes and IBM shipped 199 900 systems. Sun and Fujitsu Siemens rounded out the top five with 64 000 and 25 500 units shipped, respectively.

Taiwan`s compact disc-makers are pumping up production of DVDs, raising fears of a return supply glut that forced firms into the red last year, reports Reuters.

CMC Magnetics, the top player in the $2 billion optical disc industry, second largest Ritek, Prodisc Technology and Lead Data all plan to increase digital versatile disc (DVD) production lines.

While DVDs have more storage capacity and enjoy higher selling prices than compact discs, translating into wider profit margins for manufacturers, analysts say excessive supply could mean a repeat of the industry`s hard times of 2002.

As content filtering becomes a growing challenge with Internet users becoming more adept at sidestepping efforts to block their views, Allot Communications offers a solution, reports eWeek. The company offers an upgraded version of NetPure content filtering, with added language filtering support, improved management and better abilities to foil bypass attempts.

Users have learned to bypass fixed filtering lists by pointing their browsers to proxy sites, such as translation sites. NetPure, "not a standard look-for-keywords system", has enhanced ability to block disguised off-limits sites and cuts back on over-blocking errors. It uses artificial intelligence to analyse and categorise the HTML page of a requested site, looking at many characteristics of the page, including colour, font, number of pictures and word repetition on the fly.

Matsushita Electric Industrial, best known for its Panasonic-brand electronics and communications products, and Picsel Technologies, a provider of embedded software, have announced a licensing agreement to embed Picsel Browser and File Viewer on Panasonic SD memory card products. Under the agreement, Panasonic will globally market the Picsel-powered memory cards, which will enhance the Internet browsing and file viewing capabilities of mobile information devices.