0413.1 Hot Topics

• NEC Delivers New Disaster Recovery Solution; Solution
  Provides Customers with Rapidly Deployed, Cost-Effective
  Infrastructure for Mission-Critical Resources

0413.2 Story of the Issue

• DisplaySearch US FPD Conference Attracts Record Number of
  Attendees - FPD Market is Upgraded, while Component
  Shortages are a Concern

0413.3 Applications

• Network Associates Addresses the Security Challenges of
  Small to Medium Businesses With New McAfee SMB Editions

0413.4 Internet

• U.S. Broadband Market Reaches Critical Mass
  Reports In-Stat/MDR

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00413.1 Hot Topics

***NEC Delivers New Disaster Recovery Solution; Solution Provides Customers with Rapidly Deployed, Cost-Effective Infrastructure for Mission-Critical Resources

ClusterWorld Expo
Santa Clara, California
April 06, 2004

NEC Solutions (America), Inc., a premier provider of integrated solutions for the Connected Enterprise in North America, today introduced the NEC Disaster Recovery Fault Tolerant (FT) Solution, a highly anticipated new enterprise-grade disaster recovery solution that allows companies to recover from virtually any infrastructure system failure while ensuring the ongoing availability and integrity of mission-critical resources. NEC unveiled its Disaster Recovery FT Solution today as part of its participation in the ClusterWorld(TM) Conference and Expo in San Jose, Calif.

Built with NEC's EXPRESSCLUSTER(R) software, Express5800/320Lb server and S1300 storage platforms, the Disaster Recovery FT Solution offers customers an easy-to-deploy, cost-effective infrastructure solution that protects mission-critical data in the event of the destruction of local computing resources, while allowing surviving resources to continue working with access to the latest data.

According to NEC, the primary objective of a disaster recovery plan is to enable an organization to survive a computer room disaster and to re-establish normal business operations in just a few minutes. In order to survive, an organization must ensure that critical operations can resume within a reasonable timeframe. NEC's Disaster Recovery FT Solution is designed to minimize the duration of a serious disruption to business operations, facilitate effective coordination of recovery tasks, and most important, reduce the complexity of the recovery effort.

NEC's Disaster Recovery FT Solution is a comprehensive solution that leverages several leading technologies developed by NEC to provide the following benefits:

-- Up to 99.999% Hardware Availability - Server and storage technology minimizes chances of remote failover operations that require service interruptions, failover and fail back operational risks.

-- Automatic Failover via WAN - Seamless operations between fault tolerant procedures in local failures and disaster recovery procedures.

-- Disaster Recovery in Minutes - Node heartbeat monitoring detects whether a cluster node is functional, and then enables to failover within minutes.

-- Data Integrity - Application data mirroring technology provides complete data integrity between production local database and remote one.

-- One-Stop Support - NEC Solutions America provides total solution support including hardware, software and services.

-- High Performance Storage - Fault tolerant S1300 storage from NEC complements the fault tolerant servers with fully redundant hardware providing nearly 4TB of fibre channel storage capacity.

-- Cost-Effective Configurations - Customers can choose from "Active/Active" configurations where both servers host and backup data or "Active/Passive" configuration where active applications reside on one server and data is backed up to another server for emergency use.

Scalable Software, Continuous Hardware

At the core of NEC's Disaster Recovery FT Solution is a scalable and flexible clustering software solution that provides automatic recovery. When a fault occurs at the server, the software understands that the server is designed with fault tolerant hardware. However, in the event of a data center-level disaster that destroys the whole server, the EXPRESSCLUSTER software automatically detects the loss of the server and instantly instructs another server to take over the workload of the faulty server, allowing the users to access all their applications and data to continue to operate. Using virtual IP addresses and virtual computer names enables a server to be reconnected without renaming of the devices or the client application being aware that the server was switched.

The power behind NEC's Disaster Recovery FT Solution is the Express 5800/320Lb server which is designed to provide mission-critical applications with continuous availability in an easy to manage, affordable, compact, rack-mount (4U) or pedestal platform. The Dual Modular Redundant (DMR) design of the Express5800/320Lb allows easy replacement of major subsystems without interruption of processing. The unique dual-modular hardware architecture is comprised of redundant subsystems executing all processing in lockstep to virtually eliminate any single point of failure while safeguarding data integrity. These CPU subsystems perform the same instructions at the same time, with instantaneous failover to the redundant subsystem in the event of hardware failure.

For example, if a disaster error occurs, the system isolates the faulty subsystem and instantly fails over to the alternate subsystem without memory data loss or application interruption. Servicing the system is as simple as replacing the faulty module while the server remains online. There is no interruption in processing, no data loss and no performance impact.

http://www.nec.com/

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0413.2 Story of the Issue

***DisplaySearch US FPD Conference Attracts Record Number of Attendees - FPD Market is Upgraded, while Component Shortages are a Concern

As Reported by DisplaySearch

Austin, Texas
April 6, 2004

The 6th Annual US FPD Conference was hosted by DisplaySearch last week in San Diego, California, attracting over 405 attendees. The conference examined all aspects of the FPD market ranging from equipment and materials segments to end markets. Presentations included results through calendar year 2003 and new forecasts to 2008. DisplaySearch analysts presented their extensive results in many different market areas, with emphasis on component pricing, supply and demand. The train of thought runs toward TV dominance over LCD and other display forms in the next five years. More to come.

DisplaySearch released an excellent summary of the conference that we have adapted to the readers of the WAVE Report. Due to a conflict, the WAVE Report could not attend this year's event, which is consistently the top conference on the display marketplace.

A number of new products and technologies were introduced and discussed by a broad representation of the technological developers and manufacturers of LCD, advanced TV and public display components. A consensus clearly emerged that CRT technology is overwhelmingly being supplanted by LCD and FPD technology. In fact, there is a concerted effort to completely and quickly eliminate the CRT as a display device for any purpose. This cannot happen until the consistent high-resolution capabilities that are inherent in CRT display can be completely absorbed into the LCD component arena. However, conferences such as this indicate that comparable and, in many cases, far greater capabilities in LCD technology are already upon us.

First, some statistics. According to DisplaySearch, both the near-term and out-year growth aspects of the FPD are very, very promising:

The FPD market is expected to grow 17% from 2003 to 2008 reaching $95.0 billion and an 84% share of the display module market. Growth is expected to be even more impressive than was experienced in 2003, rising at 25% through 2006. In 2004 alone, the FPD market is expected to rise 39% to $59.9 billion after already experiencing 48% growth to $43.1 billion in 2003.
2003 was an amazing year for TFT LCDs with five applications enjoying more than 100% growth. TFT LCDs and PDPs are expected to drive the growth through 2008, rising at 17% and 36% respectively. TFT LCDs + AMOLEDs are expected to reach a dominant $77 billion for an 81% share in 2008, up from $33.2 billion and a 77% share.

Significantly, TVs are expected to overtake desktop monitors as the primary FPD application in 2006 and the primary TFT LCD application in 2008. The FPD unit share of the TV market is expected to rise from 4% in 2003 to 36% in 2008 while the FPD revenue share is expected to rise from 18% in 2003 to 68% in 2008. FPD-based TVs, which includes LCD TVs, PDP TVs and micro display-based TVs, are expected to rise 66% to 74M units. The 40"-plus TV market is expected to rise from 7.5 million units in 2004 to 23.5 million units in 2008 with micro display RPTVs surpassing CRT RPTVs in 2006 and dominating from 2007.
In an analysis of the desktop monitor market by technology and size, DisplaySearch presented the following:

While demand for TFT LCDs is robust, supply will rise even faster with 16% more capacity expected to be installed in 2004 on a square meter basis than from 2001 - 2003. This is combined with an anticipated 73% growth in equipment spending in 2004 to a record $11.3 billion. Significant spending is also expected in 2005 and 2006 that will grow the surplus. However, identified component shortages in glass, color filters and lamps will cause the component supply-limited TFT LCD surplus to remain quite tight.

Component suppliers will likely struggle to keep up with TFT LCD capacity growth as there are fewer suppliers in a given segment. These suppliers tend to be smaller companies that may be unable to raise the significant financing required to invest at the rate of TFT LCD suppliers. They are concerned about vertical integration, the fact that it is difficult for new entrants to quickly meet the demanding technical requirements, and they may be skeptical about the rapid growth expected for LCD TVs. Although TFT LCD factory utilization is expected to decline for suppliers without close ties to key component suppliers, the importance of utilization will decline at larger substrate fabs due to their productivity benefits while maintaining a healthy long-term outlook for TFT LCD suppliers.

30 notebook and LCD monitor panel buyers rated 15 TFT LCD suppliers in DisplaySearch's 4th Annual Customer Satisfaction survey. Each buyer rated their suppliers by answering 25 questions covering five categories that include Quality, Technology, Logistics, Commercial Terms and Service & Support. The second-place panel suppliers in terms of volume in each category were the winners in customer satisfaction. Samsung earned the top position in LCD monitors with a slight advantage over AU Optronics and LG.Philips LCD and won the top position in notebook PCs with a slight lead over CPT.

A number of new products and technologies were introduced:

From Samsung, AMLCD Vice President Joe Virginia announced its Super PVA technology for LCD TVs that widens viewing angles and minimizes color shift. He also announced their new Accurate Color Capture (ACC) technology to improve black levels and maximize contrast. Samsung will invest $23 billion in the next ten years at its new TFT LCD production site. Mr. Virginia also pushed for the adoption of standards at 7th gen with the industry benefiting by following Samsung's lead in terms of selecting substrate and panel sizes. Samsung Vice President Peter Shin announced that it is now in production of color filter on array (COA) technology for notebook panels significantly improving brightness and contrast. COA will also reduce power consumption and enable PVA-mode notebook panels. The company demonstrated a 17" WXGA PVA-mode COA panel at the expanded exhibit.

Toshiba America Senior Manager Masato Kemmochi introduced ultra-light 10.4"-14.1" notebook panels from TMDisplay manufactured with 0.3mm thin glass substrates. Commercial notebook PCs using this technology were shown at the Toshiba booth in the exhibit.
E Ink Senior Marketing Manager Darren Bischoff unveiled the first commercial implementation of electronic ink through the demonstration of Sony's new e-Book reader named LIBRIe, renewing interest in the promise of a paperless society.

Dr. Hiroaki Sugiura, Mitsubishi Electric Visual Systems Corp, outlined the company's strategy to continue to improve the color gamut of LCD monitors. This strategy will allow them to outperform their CRT counterpart, the long time industry benchmark for color performance and color matching.

Lumileds Vice President Mark Pugh announced the availability of their Luxeon DCC, a fully assembled LED-based RGB light source for LCD backlights. The backlight units are available in five sizes for ranging from 5" to 18.1". The backlight provides consistent brightness and color uniformity. The most important attribute of LED based backlights is that they produce vibrant color reproduction, expanding LCD color gamut to 105% of NTSC, as much as 45% greater than conventional CCFL products and enabling excellent LCD TV performance.

Orbotech Vice President Noam Cohen discussed the technology behind their new AOI based "Optical Test" application. The application employs real time scan data with high-resolution video microscope images to classify fatal defects. Using AOI for this function, Orbotech believes they can replace a large number of full contact Opens & Short probe based testers and reduce total array yield management spending by 30%.

Analog Devices Director of Visual Signaling Products Bill Bucklen reaffirmed the longevity of analog interfaces in advanced digital TV systems. He also discussed the need to migrate toward 10-bit and 12-bit precision at both the input and output of the electronics system. Mr. Bucklen introduced three new mixed signal products:

ADV7402 - a multi-format video decoder with a twelve channel input source multiplexer,

AD9880 - a 150MHz triple ADC with color space conversion and integrated 150MHz HDMI, plus

ADAV430 - an advanced digital audio processor for ATV applications.

Microsemi Vice President George Henry demonstrated a new visible light sensor, the LX1970, that provides automatic brightness control. This sensor approximates the human eye's spectral response to boost the LCD TV viewing experience. In addition Mr. Henry presented patented technologies to build flat panel backlight power inverters satisfying numerous different design criteria.

Silicon Image Vice President Parviz Kodhi introduced TMDS-Lite for internal display interfacing. TMDS-Lite is a low power, low swing and low-EMI version of TMDS. He claimed it was superior to LVDS in terms of EMI, power consumption, jitter tolerance and cable length, offered ultra HDTV bandwidth and color depth beyond 8-bits. The interface uses the same TMDS signaling of DVI and HDMI. But it is also a superset of LVDS and can be operated in a mode that is backward compatible with existing LVDS interfaces in order to enable a smooth transition to the newer technology.

National Semiconductor Displays Group Chief Technical Officer Nikhil Balram introduced their Point-to-Point Differential Signaling (PPDS) interface solution for next generation intra-panel interface architectures targeted at larger, higher resolution panels. PPDS eliminates vias and multiple column driver loads per data line, allows for the reduction of TTL control signals and automatic de-skewing to improve the timing margin. It also allows gamma curves to be programmed in the TCON rather than hardwired. As a result, a simpler, lower cost board can be adopted, display size can be increased, motion video is improved, color temperature is more accurate and gamma can be manually adjusted for each driver IC individually.

Philips Semiconductors Chief Architect of LCD TV solutions Dick van den Broeke presented information on the company's new TDA15500, a full function single chip A/V controller for LCD TV applications. Using this IC it is possible to build a complete low end LCD TV controller board requiring only external DRAM, tuners, passive components and connectors.

Other highlights included bold predictions, recent technological advances and useful data and analysis including:

Keynote and Apple VP of Hardware Products Greg Jozwiak discussed the "hope and delusion" in the display system market classifying media center PCs, handheld video players and non-innovative PC companies entering the consumer electronics space as delusional. He recommended that LCD manufacturers get back to basics by reducing price and improving performance to drive CRTs out of the market.

Citigroup's Director of Technology Investment Banking Son Nguyen explained why TFT LCD suppliers are so attractive and what it takes to be successful. He also explained that the smaller players provide a profitable "price floor" for the larger players and getting to the next generation a year ahead of competitors can create 30% - 40% more value creating a strong incentive to continue to invest.

Regarding LCD monitors, advanced TVs and public displays:

Jim Sanduski, Keynote and Vice President of Marketing at Samsung's Visual Display Products Group, outlined his belief that digital cable compatibility will give a significant boost to the sales of both high definition displays and high definition and digital content. Sanduski also saw microdisplay devices quickly dominating RPTVs in the U.S.

Keynote and Japan Picture Quality and Technology Laboratory CEO Jumpei Nakamura summarized the results of their comparative LCD and PDP TV measurements showing that both LCD and PDP manufacturers have made major progress in improving image quality. He also revealed that there is still intense competition among LCD makers to reduce color shift for off-axis viewing and eliminate motion blurring. PDPs provide a broader color gamut and great contrast in dark rooms, but need to reduce reflection of ambient light and eliminate ghosting.

Scott Hardy of Dell revealed their strategy to continue to dominate the desktop monitor market and their goals to essentially remove CRT monitors from customer's consideration sets. Displays are becoming such an integral part of Dell's overall strategy that that a new Displays Line of Business has been formed, which appears to be the first time a traditional PC manufacturer has treated the display as more than just a peripheral product. Dell is now recognizing it as one of the most key elements in the overall computer and CE experience. Hardy also reviewed Dell's considerable brand strength and customer loyalty. Dell's customer research indicated willingness to buy CE products from Dell. Hardy also urged the industry to move quickly toward standardization in order to best deliver high quality products at exceptional prices.

Building on its strategies put in place in previous years, Carl Steudle, Vice President at LG.Philips LCD, outlined compelling reasons for both corporations and consumers alike to consider wide-aspect desktop monitors as their standard monitor for mainstream computing going forward especially in the 17"W, 20"W and 23"W categories.

CMO Associate Vice President Dr. CL Kuo revealed that they intend to spend $9 billion over 5-years on TFT LCD capacity targeting the TV market. He revealed their panel roadmap through 2005, claimed their TV design wins have been rising and expressed confidence in their ability to rapidly grow in this segment with products ranging from 17" to more than 60".
The market strategy of one of the first Chinese companies to enter in to the US market, SVA (Shanghai Video and Audio) the largest CE company in China, was outlined by Mike Higgins COO of SVA-USA.

Laura Kubisiak of Planar, revealed the company's strategy behind its recent price decreases for medical diagnostic imaging displays. These high resolution (3 megapixel to 5 megapixel) displays have historically carried significant price deltas over other, lower resolution "desktop" monitors. This is a paradigm which Planar looks to change by significantly lowering pricing on these technologies in an attempt to accelerate more wide-spread use in diagnostic applications. This occurs as the medical industry continues to look for economical ways to move from a film based to a computer based environment.

Candace Peterson, Vice President of InFocus made a compelling case for unexpectedly high microdisplay growth as well as outlining why InFocus would fare well due to its ability to respond more nimbly to opportunities compared with traditional CE manufacturers.

John Long, Director of Consumer Products Marketing for Gateway, shared a great deal of insight into Gateway's TV customer profiles including demographics of their plasma TV customers. Long also reviewed Gateway's mix of sales between retail storefronts and their direct sales via their phone center and web site. He also announced their plans to redirect their retail efforts to third-party dealers.

Norman Bardsley, Director of Display Technology at DisplaySearch, stressed the need for further measurements by independent laboratories to evaluate quality and performance and announced the inception of a program of tests that will be carried out by Westar, in collaboration with DisplaySearch, covering rear-view projection systems as well as LCDs and PDPs. Norman also stressed the importance of reconciling conflicting standards across the globe and the need for a better understanding of customer preferences in front-of-screen performance. He recommended the inclusion of photosensors to gauge the ambient light intensity, with feedback systems to modify peak intensity and gray-scale control. This will lead to better pictures and substantial power savings.

Jim Noecker, Senior Digital Engineer at Plasmaco, explained his belief that plasma displays provide the ideal technology for HDTV, providing a fully digital signal path that faithfully preserves the detail and dynamic range of HDTV video at all viewing angles. Jim showed that the shortcomings of PDPs in some public information applications have been addressed and will not cause serious problems in home-entertainment applications. Lifetimes are now over 60,000 hours, spanning 20 years under normal usage patterns. Large-volume production and improvements in drive electronics should lead to full support for 1080p broadcasts and rapid declines in manufacturing costs.

Jin Im, Marketing Manager at LG Electronics, outlined the aggressive expansion of PDP manufacturing lines in Korea. LGE expects to produce 2.5M panels in 2005 to gain a 36% share of a 7M set market. Retail prices of HDTVs are expected to fall to $2K for 42" and $3K for 50" sets, as the demand rises to 13M panels. This demand will be encouraged by further improvements in brightness, contrast and power consumption.

John Reder, Manager of the DLPTM Tabletop Television Business Unit at Texas Instruments, reported that the U. S. market share of the large screen TV market (over 40") captured by microdisplay-based projection systems rose to over 20% in the 4th quarter of 2003, up from less than 3% one year earlier. This advance was due to high image quality and aggressive pricing. Continuation of this trend may be limited temporarily by shortages of key components, such as lamps and screens, but sales of over 4M units are anticipated by 2007. Innovative optical systems are enabling sets to be constructed with depths as low as 7" for 60" diagonal screens, and elegant designs mean that rear-view projection systems achieve much of the aesthetic appeal of flat panels.

Guido Voltolina, Marketing Manager for Display Technology Operations at Intel, described the company strategy to market their Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) technology, code named "Cayley". The goal is to deliver superior image quality at a lower price, enabling more people to afford a film-like, big-screen HDTV experience. Targets are set to provide HDTV upgrades at prices close to the current average for large CRT-TVs (~$1500), although entry prices may be around $2000. Intel will exploit their experience in silicon design and manufacture to provide a family of chips for 1, 2 and 3-panel systems at both 720p and 1080p resolution. The drive circuits will be all-digital, allowing a high level of integration and stable control of light intensity and color. The light valves should be suitable for use with the same lamps and screens used in existing microdisplay TVs, although some of the intermediate optics must be adapted. This development is a key component in Intel's Digital Home strategy.

Siegfried Trinker, Director of Corporate Strategy at LG.Philips Displays, stressed the growing divergence between two segments of the TV market. Volume growth will be driven by emerging markets, from 100M sets in 2003 to around 150M in 2009, at an average price below $250. Value growth will occur predominantly in advanced markets with the average price rising from $486 in 2003 to $625 in 2006. Innovation in CRT technologies will not cease completely. For example, LPD is planning to introduce a "super-slim" 32" CRT with wide aspect ratio and a depth of only 15", that may provide a lower-cost alternative to RPTV.

Regarding FPD equipment and materials markets:

Corning Senior Vice President Donald McNaughton revealed that Corning expects glass substrate demand to rise 50% from 2003 to 2006 to 920M square feet. To keep up with TFT LCD supply growth, McNaughton announced that Corning and its joint venture Samsung Corning have made investments of over $1 billion in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Kent Lee, Vice President at Taiwanese color filter manufacturer AMTC, announced that they are negotiating with several panel manufacturers to provide color filter process technology. The company will work with BOE Hydis in Beijing to supply 5th gen color filters. AMTC suggested the biggest challenge for producing TV type color filters are demanding color gamut requirements. Color reproduction is driven by color resist specifications, which should have high transmission at spectral peaks, strong absorption at other wavelengths and a steep spectral profile.

Dr. Peter Le Masurier, Market Research Manager at leading liquid crystal supplier Merck, suggested that with LCDs dominating the FPD market, the current 100 ton per year liquid crystal demand would increase to 300 ~ 400/tons per year around 2007.

Fuji Film explained that in addition to their dominate market position for TAC and wide viewing angle films, the company also provides anti-reflection films and color filter transfer film technology. Fuji is helping to make LCD modules lower cost and thinner with a new product that removes one TAC layer and laminates the polarizer directly to wide viewing angle films.

Unaxis Displays Executive Vice President Ruurd Boomsma indicated that in addition to strong PE-CVD business in 2004, they have received a significant number of P/Os for array process sputtering (PVD) tools. The company had nearly discontinued its PVD business a couple years back, but now is being rewarded with its decision to keep the business running through new design wins.

Color filter sputter system maker Applied Films announced the $14.5 million acquisition of the In-Line Division of Taiwan based Helix Technology, Inc. The acquisition adds 50 employees to Applied Films Taiwan staff, which is expected to reduce manufacturing costs and further strengthen relationships with the critical Taiwanese customer base.

In the final analysis, the conference presented a broad venue of topics and industry speakers to address the ascendancy of LCD and PDP, and the decline of traditional the CRT. While many of the technical issues are being solved, concerns over raw material supplies and adequate financing for small companies remains to be completely solved. There is no doubt that the LCD market is growing. Retail outlets and catalog suppliers don't include CRT options for display products. Just as the demand for a desktop PC is waning, replaced by the equally capable notebook, the movement toward smaller-footprint, more compact computing and display components is gathering momentum. And the LCD/PDP/TV display industry is moving quickly to position itself for substantial growth in the next five years.

DisplaySearch will be sponsoring three conferences in three different countries in the next four months including:

· May 28, 7th DisplaySearch Japan Forum, Tokyo Conference Center, Shinagawa, Japan.

· June 10 - 11, Taiwan FPD International Conference 2004, Taiwan International Convention Center, Taipei, Taiwan,
co-sponsored by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council and the Interchange Association of Japan.

· August 24 - 26, HDTV Forum 2004, Westin Century Plaza, Los Angeles, California, co-sponsored by Insight Media.

For more information on any DisplaySearch conference, product or service, please contact Kendra Smith at 512-459-3126 or by email at kendra@displaysearch.com. The conference proceedings are now available in hard copy and CD-ROM for $895 by visiting http://www.displaysearch.com/usfpd2004/registration.html or calling 512-459-3126.

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0413.3 Applications

***Network Associates Addresses the Security Challenges of Small to Medium Businesses With New McAfee SMB Editions

Santa Clara, California
April 5, 2004

Network Associates, Inc. announced the availability of McAfee(R) Active VirusScan(TM) SMB Edition and McAfee(R) Active Virus Defense SMB Edition, two integrated anti-virus protection solutions that have been designed for the channel and specifically for ease of use for small to medium businesses (SMBs). The McAfee SMB Edition suites both feature McAfee(R) ProtectionPilot(TM), a centralized management tool that provides SMBs with a simple, proactive approach to the deployment and ongoing management of their virus protection.

For most small to medium sized businesses, security is a huge challenge. With systems connected to the Internet, business can be susceptible to malicious code threats like viruses, worms, hacker attacks, spam and inappropriate content. This reality is especially difficult for smaller and medium businesses that require robust, yet manageable security but do not necessarily have the specialized knowledge to monitor, maintain and administer their system support.

Most SMBs often look to their resellers for guidance in selecting their IT and security solutions. Network Associates has proactively equipped its McAfee reseller partners with the knowledge to support SMB customers more effectively. The McAfee SMB Editions will be available exclusively through the channel, providing McAfee reseller partners with a solution that is easy install, easy to use and has numerous consulting and services opportunities. This makes the task of recommending effective anti-virus solutions to their valuable customers easier than before.

McAfee Active VirusScan SMB Edition provides centrally managed virus protection for desktops and file servers. Building upon this solution is McAfee Active Virus Defense SMB Edition, which additionally provides virus and content protection for email. Central to McAfee SMB Editions is McAfee ProtectionPilot, which ensures the path to protection is simple and straightforward with automatic updates. IT administrators can easily monitor all systems for virus activity and update status within the interactive security dashboard. Protection is automatically checked and updated and any fine-tuning or configuration changes can be simply made through the easy-to-navigate "Do it Now!" management task menu.

McAfee System Protection solutions for SMBs solve the unique needs of small to medium-sized customers who are just as vulnerable to virus, worm and hacker attacks as larger enterprises, but are generally less equipped to prepare for and defend against them. McAfee has developed two purpose-built anti-virus and security management solutions, McAfee Managed Services for customers who prefer not to worry about keeping up to date and McAfee SMB Editions for customers that would like to maintain in-house control of their anti-virus defenses with a simplified management interface. McAfee SMB customers have the choice of self-managed security solutions or managed security solutions, both targeted and designed for use by SMB users.

Availability

McAfee Active VirusScan SMB Edition and McAfee Active Virus Defense SMB Edition are available through Network Associates channel partners in North America, Latin America and EMEA on April 19, 2004. Additionally, existing licensed users of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise and McAfee(R) NetShield(R) for NetWare with a current PrimeSupport agreement Grant ID are entitled to access, download and deployment of McAfee ProtectionPilot from the Network Associates software downloads repository.

http://www.mcafeesecurity.com/

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0413.4 Internet

***In-Stat/MDR Reports that the U.S. Broadband Market Reaches Critical Mass

Scottsdale, Arizona
April 6, 2004

With close to 27 million U.S. business and residential subscribers at the end of 2003, broadband is now clearly a mainstream service, reports In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm projects that the mainstreaming of broadband will be huge, as the existence of a significant subscriber base opens up markets for other services that are looking to take advantage of the broadband connection, such as home entertainment and networking, Voice over IP (VoIP) and online gaming.

According to In-Stat/MDR, this starts a cycle where growth in both broadband and applications feed the growth of each other. This applies equally to the business subscriber. Broadband growth should also improve service provider operations as well. However, the one major challenge that faces the future provisioning of broadband will come from a less tech-savvy subscriber.

In-Stat/MDR asserts that as broadband moves into mass adoption, newer subscribers will be less experienced with computers and the Internet. They will expect all of the benefits of the Internet, but will have less patience for dealing with its technical issues. When their service goes down they are going to be less likely than early adopters to perform self-diagnosis, and more likely to just pick up the phone and call customer service. Also, their lower level of technical knowledge will make communicating with them more difficult. However, the opportunities will outweigh the challenges.

In-Stat/MDR also found that:

-- At the end of 2003, one in every five U.S. households subscribed to a broadband service.

-- In the United States, cable modem continues to be the most common broadband access technology, with DSL remaining in second.

-- Broadband over Power Line, after years of discussion, is finally moving out of the lab and into actual homes.

-- Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) continues to be hindered by cost and regulatory concerns.

-- Fixed Wireless Broadband (FWB) is now the third most common broadband access technology in the United States.

-- While cable modem may be the broadband technology of choice in the United States, worldwide, DSL dominates due to lack of cable data service, and greater housing density outside of the United States.

-- At the end of 2003, Comcast and Time Warner accounted for the majority of all cable modem subscribers. Overall, six cable operators had 91 percent of the U.S. cable modem market at end-of-year 2003.

-- SBC and Verizon accounted for the majority of U.S. DSL subscribers at the end of 2003. Overall, five providers accounted for 94 percent of the U.S. DSL market.

The report, "Reaching Critical Mass: The US Broadband Market" (#IN0401334TX), examines the market for both residential and business broadband services. This report contains five-year forecasts for the following broadband services -- cable modem, DSL, fixed wireless broadband, fiber-to-the-home, satellite, and broadband power line. Other forecasts in this report include total U.S. residential and business broadband subscriber forecasts. This report also provides broadband market share by provider and technology. It is available at In-Stat/MDR.

http://www.instat.com/

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