BEIJING

Zarva, Fortinet co-op

Zarva Technology, the third-largest distributor of IBM products in China, recently joined hands with Fortinet, a US-based firewall solutions provider.

Through co-operation in the future, Zarva expects to sharpen its competitive edge and win the lion's share of the antivirus technology market, said Zhu Jianqiu, president of Zarva Technology.

Data sourcing company IDC predicts China's information security market will be worth 670 million yuan (US$81.2 million) by 2007. Currently, it is worth 200 million yuan (US$24.2 million).

PLC product launched

China GridCom Co Ltd, a telecommunications firm affiliated with State Power Grid Corp, has launched a ground-breaking PLC (power line communications) product and related solutions.

The PLC, unveiled recently, has the broadest bandwidth in China.

The product, with a bandwidth of 200Mbps (megabytes per second), enables faster, more stable Internet connections compared with the previous two generations of domestically made PLC products.

Analysts suggest PLC, given the 200Mbps bandwidth, has a promising future in China, and that it could become as popular as ADSL.

PLC transmits signals through power grids. Although PLC is not a mature, widely used application in any country, it is considered a promising Internet-connection technology, as any power grid can provide instant, low-cost Internet access.

NetScreen's new OS

NetScreen Technologies Inc, a world-leading provider of integrated network security solutions, recently launched a new operating system for its IDP (intrusion detection and prevention) products.

The OS makes it easier for users to detect attacks on their computers.

The OS, called NetScreen-IDP3.0, integrates NetScreen's four previous chained IDP solutions - network status analysis, attack scanning, information security management and traditional IDP systems - into one platform.

As a result, technicians can adjust, more quickly, security measures and prevent attacks.

ECS, Toshiba deal

ECS Technology (China) Ltd, the country's No 2 distributor of information technology products, signed a deal last Friday with Toshiba to distribute the latter's notebook PCs in the Chinese mainland.

Under the deal, ECS will become the general distributor, in the Chinese mainland, of Toshiba's laptops. Digital China, the country's top IT product distributor, previously was Toshiba's general distributor.

Toshiba, previously the top laptop seller in China, has underperformed - compared with chief rivals IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo - in recent years.

ECS, which posted record sales of 5 billion yuan (US$602 million) last year, is the largest partner with HP, IBM and Apple in the notebook PC business.

(Business Weekly 04/20/2004 page1)