Xerox builds up services

Xerox's proposed $6.4 billion acquisition of business process outsourcer Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) is the latest example of a major hardware vendor looking to enlarge its business footprint by increasing its services capabilities, reports eWeek.

Xerox's ACS deal comes just over a week after Dell said it is buying Perot Systems for

$3.9 billion, and a year after Hewlett-Packard, which already had a formidable services unit, bought EDS for $13.9 billion.

The three deals illustrate a trend of major companies looking to services as a way to add recurring revenue sources and offer customers help at a time when IT environments are growing in their complexity, according to analysts.

Adobe and McAfee have teamed up to deliver a combined data-loss-prevention and DRM solution aimed at businesses and enterprises, states PC Magazine.

The combined solution will characterise critical documents and then assign access controls to them, both based on policies. Both will serve as new tools to prevent confidential documents from being e-mailed outside the company.

The goal is to eliminate data breaches and their catastrophic costs. The Ponemon Institute estimates that in 2008, there was approximately $3.15 billion of latent demand by businesses in the US for technology and software to protect unstructured data, a term which Ponemon uses for random files stored on a variety of media.

HP has introduced solutions to help small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) improve data security, maximise productivity and minimise business risk while significantly reducing costs and energy use, says ConsumerElectronicsNet.

The offerings expand the HP Total Care portfolio, which helps SMEs manage, protect and grow their businesses.

'By investing in new IT solutions now, SMEs will be in a stronger position to seize growth opportunities and thrive as the economy rebounds,' says Kathy Chou, vice-president, worldwide small and mid-size business strategy, HP.