Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- Updates, advisories and surprises
- Thinking Past Location in Finding Space
- Jabil strides in a new direction
- Google’s next goal: Rule offline world

Updates, advisories and surprises
MarketWatch – Nov 23, 2006
, self-storage company, reported fiscal six-month profit rose 35% on 21% higher revenue. For the period ended Sept. 30, earnings were 41. 1 million pounds, or 37. 81 pence a share, compared with 30.

Thinking Past Location in Finding Space
New York Times – Nov 23, 2006
While a broker’s commission, typically 20 percent to 30 percent of average annual rent, always comes out of the landlord’s pocket, some argue that a broker who serves only tenants has more incentive to protect tenant interests. A broker’s loyalty should be especially questioned if he is representing both sides of the same deal, says Janet Portman, an author of “Negotiate the Best Lease for Your Business. The owners of Archivas Inc. , a three-year-old maker of storage software, learned about conflict of interest the hard way. Shortly after moving into an expensive office building in Waltham, Mass. , Archivas began suffering power shortages. With a laboratory full of large computers, Archivas needed more electricity for equipment and cooling than the building could provide.

Jabil strides in a new direction
St. Petersburg Times – Nov 23, 2006
Petersburg manufacturer is offering nearly $1-billion in a bid to buy Taiwan Green Point Enterprises Co. , which makes plastic casings for everything from Sony Ericsson cellphones to Apple's video iPod to popular BlackBerry devices. Jabil's tender offer for the publicly traded company, based in Taichung, Taiwan, is $3. If completed, it would be Jabil's largest acquisition ever, costing $875-million to $900-million. The deal would enlarge Jabil's worldwide employee base by about 50 percent to nearly 100,000. In addition, Green Point, which had 2006 revenues of $517-million, will add nine factories – seven in China and one each in Taiwan and Malaysia – to Jabil's roster of nearly 50 facilities in 20 countries… "We are thrilled to announce this deal with Green Point Enterprises," Main said. "When combined with Jabil's global infrastructure, systems and electronic expertise, we will possess a market leading end-to-end capability with outstanding long-term growth prospects. "Since entering the consumer electronics business in 2002, the segment has become a bigger contributor to Jabil's revenues – generating an estimated $4-billion in 2007 – than the communications, computing and storage sector that has been the company's heritage. Jabil also has a growing electronics manufacturing business in the medical, instrumentation and automotive category. "IT managers might care what their product looks like, but it goes in the wiring closet somewhere," Main said, referring to Jabil's longstanding computer electronics business. "But with consumer products, things people pull out at dinner on a Friday night, they want it to look good. People want an attractive product, and they're willing to give one up to get one that's sexier and cooler.

Google’s next goal: Rule offline world
Globe and Mail – Nov 23, 2006
0 conference — that it plans to roll out new software (code-named Hummingbird) that will use the same process to synchronize any kind of data, including text, pictures, music and video. There is no question that Google is focused on a future Eric Schmidt described as having "infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power," in which the company would be able to "house all user files, including e-mails, Web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc. , and make it accessible from anywhere. " And until Internet access becomes truly ubiquitous, that means finding some way to sync that data with the offline world as well. 0 every Monday on globetechnology.