At a JD Power's event that Bob Gordon and I attended duringthe NADA Conference in San Francisco, Mr. Reuss told the audiencein no uncertain terms that he didn't like ethanol and hedescribed how using E85 in his lawn mower (or snow blower) damagedits engine
COLUMBUS, IN--May 8, 2012: Cummins Inc. is in a strong position tocontinue expanding in global markets and meet its long-term growthtargets, Cummins Chairman and Chief Executive Officer TomLinebarger told shareholders at the Company's annual meeting today. "Our technology leadership in markets around the worldenables Cummins to capitalize on the macro trends that are shapingthe global economy -- stringent emission standards, rising energyprices, globalization and infrastructure growth" Linebarger highlighted Cummins' 2011 results, including recordfinancial performance with sales up 36 percent from 2010 to morethan $18 billion, and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) up 54percent to $2.56 billion. Cummins' outstanding 2011 performance andthe strong start to 2012 positions the Company to achieve its goalof $30 billion in sales in 2015, he said. "Our technology leadership in markets around the world enablesCummins to capitalize on the macro trends that are shaping theglobal economy -- stringent emission standards, rising energyprices, globalization and infrastructure growth," Linebarger said.
The Company's profits have tripled over the past decade asinvestments in growth, new products and leading-edge technologyhave paid off, he said. Cummins' strategy to focus on five growthaccelerators makes it possible to meet the challenges of thechanging global economy -- adopt a growth mindset, develop from amultinational to a global company, achieve supply chain excellence,deliver Customer Support Excellence (CSE), and invest in leadershipdevelopment. "I'm proud to report a strong year in 2011 with record financialperformance and I believe our future is even brighter as wecapitalize on our current strengths and future opportunities," saidLinebarger said. "However, I am even more proud of the hard workand commitment of the 44,000 Cummins employees who come to workeach day not only making a difference here, but having a positiveimpact on the community as well." Linebarger thanked Cummins employees across the world for theirhard work, highlighting numerous examples of how they exemplifycorporate values through both their work at Cummins as well as inthe community. More than 16,000 Cummins employees spent about130,000 hours working to better their communities, he noted.
In the business portion of the meeting, Cummins shareholders votedto elect the nine Cummins directors standing for election to theBoard for another year and ratified PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC asthe Company's external auditing firm for 2012. The Board members elected today are: Tom Linebarger Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cummins Inc.(first elected to the board in 2009) Robert Bernhard, Vice President for Research, University of NotreDame (2008) Dr. Franklin Chang-D az, Chairman and CEO, Ad Astra Rocket Co.(2009) Stephen B. Dobbs, Senior Group President, Fluor Corp. Pet Carrier Bags
(2010) Robert Herdman, Managing Director, Kalorama Partners LLC (2008) Alexis M. Herman, Chairman and CEO, New Ventures Inc. (2001) William I. Miller, President of the Wallace Foundation (1989) Georgia R. China RPET Bag
Nelson, President and CEO, PTI Resources LLC (2004) Carl Ware, Retired Executive Vice President Coca-Cola Co. (2004) Shareholders also: Overwhelmingly approved, on an advisory basis, the compensation forLinebarger and other the named executives as listed in Cummins'proxy statement. Approved an amendment to the Company's by-laws to permitshareholders who own at least 25 percent of outstanding shares ofcommon stock to call a special shareholders' meeting. In a separate matter, the Cummins Board today approved a quarterlycommon stock cash dividend of 40 cents per share. Recycled Shopping Bags Manufacturer
The dividendwould be payable on June 1, 2012 to shareholders of record on May18, 2012. About Cummins Cummins Inc., a global power leader, is a corporation ofcomplementary business units that design, manufacture, distributeand service engines and related technologies, including fuelsystems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions andelectrical power generation systems. Headquartered in Columbus,Indiana, (USA) Cummins employs approximately 44,000 peopleworldwide and serves customers in approximately 190 countries andterritories through a network of more than 600 company-owned andindependent distributor locations and approximately 6,500 dealerlocations. Cummins earned $1.85 billion on sales of $18.0 billionin 2011. Press releases can be found on the Web at Cummins .
The Company's profits have tripled over the past decade asinvestments in growth, new products and leading-edge technologyhave paid off, he said. Cummins' strategy to focus on five growthaccelerators makes it possible to meet the challenges of thechanging global economy -- adopt a growth mindset, develop from amultinational to a global company, achieve supply chain excellence,deliver Customer Support Excellence (CSE), and invest in leadershipdevelopment. "I'm proud to report a strong year in 2011 with record financialperformance and I believe our future is even brighter as wecapitalize on our current strengths and future opportunities," saidLinebarger said. "However, I am even more proud of the hard workand commitment of the 44,000 Cummins employees who come to workeach day not only making a difference here, but having a positiveimpact on the community as well." Linebarger thanked Cummins employees across the world for theirhard work, highlighting numerous examples of how they exemplifycorporate values through both their work at Cummins as well as inthe community. More than 16,000 Cummins employees spent about130,000 hours working to better their communities, he noted.
In the business portion of the meeting, Cummins shareholders votedto elect the nine Cummins directors standing for election to theBoard for another year and ratified PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC asthe Company's external auditing firm for 2012. The Board members elected today are: Tom Linebarger Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cummins Inc.(first elected to the board in 2009) Robert Bernhard, Vice President for Research, University of NotreDame (2008) Dr. Franklin Chang-D az, Chairman and CEO, Ad Astra Rocket Co.(2009) Stephen B. Dobbs, Senior Group President, Fluor Corp. Pet Carrier Bags
(2010) Robert Herdman, Managing Director, Kalorama Partners LLC (2008) Alexis M. Herman, Chairman and CEO, New Ventures Inc. (2001) William I. Miller, President of the Wallace Foundation (1989) Georgia R. China RPET Bag
Nelson, President and CEO, PTI Resources LLC (2004) Carl Ware, Retired Executive Vice President Coca-Cola Co. (2004) Shareholders also: Overwhelmingly approved, on an advisory basis, the compensation forLinebarger and other the named executives as listed in Cummins'proxy statement. Approved an amendment to the Company's by-laws to permitshareholders who own at least 25 percent of outstanding shares ofcommon stock to call a special shareholders' meeting. In a separate matter, the Cummins Board today approved a quarterlycommon stock cash dividend of 40 cents per share. Recycled Shopping Bags Manufacturer
The dividendwould be payable on June 1, 2012 to shareholders of record on May18, 2012. About Cummins Cummins Inc., a global power leader, is a corporation ofcomplementary business units that design, manufacture, distributeand service engines and related technologies, including fuelsystems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions andelectrical power generation systems. Headquartered in Columbus,Indiana, (USA) Cummins employs approximately 44,000 peopleworldwide and serves customers in approximately 190 countries andterritories through a network of more than 600 company-owned andindependent distributor locations and approximately 6,500 dealerlocations. Cummins earned $1.85 billion on sales of $18.0 billionin 2011. Press releases can be found on the Web at Cummins .
The company's previous generation router, the Accelerator, was 5%to 8% slower at serving up IOPS than the Accela, according toWhiptail CEO Dan Crain. The Invicta all-flash array can support up to 12,000 virtualdesktops and offer up to 7.5GBps of sustained throughput. Thearray, which uses an InfiniBand backplane to add additional modulararrays, can attach to servers via Fibre Channel, iSCSI FibreChannel over Ethernet, Network File System (NFS), CIFS andInfiniBand SRP. Whiptail competes against several others in the all-flash arraymarket, including Nimbus Data Systems, Violin Memory and TexasMemory Systems. The Invicta array's pricing starts at $50,000.
For that, users get1.5TB of capacity. Henry Baltazar, an analyst with 451 Research Group, said theInvicta marks a distinct upgrade from Whiptail's moremidrange-oriented products of the past. While "a couple" of vendors are coming out with scalable arrays,such as XtremIO, those products have yet to be launched, Baltazarsaid. Whiptail's appears to be the first in that category.
All-flash arrays are expensive, high-performance systems that arebuilt for applications requiring high throughput, such asrelational databases, big data analytics, large virtual desktopinfrastructures or processes requiring large batch workloads, suchas backups. "At this point, flash arrays are too expensive for many use casessuch as NAS and unstructured data storage. The need for highperformance storage for virtualization and databases is increasing rapidly, which will make flash arraysmore popular going forward. I would also point out that flasharrays can deliver high performance using a relatively small amountof rackspace, power and cooling, which should also be a factor whenconsidering [total cost of ownership]," Baltazar said. Launching Gantry Crane
Whiptail's new all-flash array can be configured in several RAIDschemes and has asynchronous replication and snapshot capabilityfor disaster recovery and business continuity. The Invicta can alsobe managed from within VMware vCenter with full support of VMware'svStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). The Invicta, which uses multi-level cell (MLC) flash, comes in 2U(3.5-in.-high) storage module chassis. Each chassis holds up to12TB of capacity and up to six chassis can be cobbled together forthe maximum system capacity along with a single 2U router unit. China Wire Rope Hoists
Afull rack consumes 1400 watts, which represents a reduction inenergy use of up to 90%, compared to legacy hard-disk-drive arrays,according to Crain. "This is the largest single-capacity SSD array made," Crain said. One of the Invicta's strong points is its ability to serve up datain a multi-tenancy architecture, meaning that multiple businessunits, or businesses in the case of a cloud storage provider, can all share the same storage pool, Crain said.Additionally, the Invicta is backward-compatible, meaningWhiptail's previous generation, single-chassis SSD arrays, can beused in an Invicta configuration. That previous-generation unit had24 SSDs for up to 12TB of capacity and 230,000 IOPS of performance. Double Girder Overhead Cranes Manufacturer
The company also launched a new version of that single-unit arraythat it said is 5% to 8% faster. The flash array market remains a relatively small one compared withthe multibillion-dollar hard-disk-array market, Baltazar said,adding that flash will not lead to the extinction of disks. "The high storage density and low cost of disk should keep harddrives around for a long time, and hard drives will continue to bethe best medium for storing infrequently accessed data and largefiles such as video," he said. Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and businesscontinuity, financial services infrastructure and healthcare IT forComputerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed.
His email address is . See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com . Read more about storage in Computerworld's Storage Topic Center.
For that, users get1.5TB of capacity. Henry Baltazar, an analyst with 451 Research Group, said theInvicta marks a distinct upgrade from Whiptail's moremidrange-oriented products of the past. While "a couple" of vendors are coming out with scalable arrays,such as XtremIO, those products have yet to be launched, Baltazarsaid. Whiptail's appears to be the first in that category.
All-flash arrays are expensive, high-performance systems that arebuilt for applications requiring high throughput, such asrelational databases, big data analytics, large virtual desktopinfrastructures or processes requiring large batch workloads, suchas backups. "At this point, flash arrays are too expensive for many use casessuch as NAS and unstructured data storage. The need for highperformance storage for virtualization and databases is increasing rapidly, which will make flash arraysmore popular going forward. I would also point out that flasharrays can deliver high performance using a relatively small amountof rackspace, power and cooling, which should also be a factor whenconsidering [total cost of ownership]," Baltazar said. Launching Gantry Crane
Whiptail's new all-flash array can be configured in several RAIDschemes and has asynchronous replication and snapshot capabilityfor disaster recovery and business continuity. The Invicta can alsobe managed from within VMware vCenter with full support of VMware'svStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). The Invicta, which uses multi-level cell (MLC) flash, comes in 2U(3.5-in.-high) storage module chassis. Each chassis holds up to12TB of capacity and up to six chassis can be cobbled together forthe maximum system capacity along with a single 2U router unit. China Wire Rope Hoists
Afull rack consumes 1400 watts, which represents a reduction inenergy use of up to 90%, compared to legacy hard-disk-drive arrays,according to Crain. "This is the largest single-capacity SSD array made," Crain said. One of the Invicta's strong points is its ability to serve up datain a multi-tenancy architecture, meaning that multiple businessunits, or businesses in the case of a cloud storage provider, can all share the same storage pool, Crain said.Additionally, the Invicta is backward-compatible, meaningWhiptail's previous generation, single-chassis SSD arrays, can beused in an Invicta configuration. That previous-generation unit had24 SSDs for up to 12TB of capacity and 230,000 IOPS of performance. Double Girder Overhead Cranes Manufacturer
The company also launched a new version of that single-unit arraythat it said is 5% to 8% faster. The flash array market remains a relatively small one compared withthe multibillion-dollar hard-disk-array market, Baltazar said,adding that flash will not lead to the extinction of disks. "The high storage density and low cost of disk should keep harddrives around for a long time, and hard drives will continue to bethe best medium for storing infrequently accessed data and largefiles such as video," he said. Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and businesscontinuity, financial services infrastructure and healthcare IT forComputerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed.
His email address is . See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com . Read more about storage in Computerworld's Storage Topic Center.