Networking electronics maker Emulex Corp. held an art competition last month at the Center Club, where California State University, Fullerton, students used recycled IT equipment gathered from the Costa Mesa-based company to build larger-than-life sculptures.
The students were given a $500 stipend for material to illustrate the concept of convergence, a key aspect of Emulex’s technology that connects data storage to servers. The competition drew 23 entries, which were pared down to 10 finalist exhibits.
Irvine native Ryan Kidder took the top prize of $5,000 for his artwork, titled Cranial Convergence.
Kidder also won a People’s Choice award—and an iPad—based on votes from the event’s Facebook page. Mark Upson, from Orange, was runner-up and won $1,000.
Emulex employees voted online to select the 10 finalists. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges, including Dr. Joe Arnold, Cal State Fullerton’s College of the Arts dean; Emulex Chief Executive Jim McCluney; Chairman Paul Folino; and others.
McCluney—an arts and education patron who’s led Emulex’s growth in converged networking equipment—is one of the more active local technology executives in philanthropy and charity work.
“We gave them a challenge to do something that is relevant, one of the key strategies to the company,” he said. “It’s all part of giving back to society, community involvement. We believe art and creativity is an important part of society.”
The students’ artwork will be displayed at Emulex offices worldwide.
More Strategic
Mindspeed Technologies Inc.’s recent partnership with Hong Kong-based China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest wireless carrier, marked a strategic shift for the Newport Beach chipmaker.
For years the company built its name making networking chips used in communications equipment and devices. Now it’s leveraging its information technology and research and development legacies to create complete solutions for manufacturers and infrastructure.
Mindspeed will support the company’s aggressive expansion plan to deploy thousands of small base stations across the country to improve China’s taxed communications infrastructure.
“We are becoming much more strategic,” said Rupert Baines, vice president of corporate strategy and marketing communications. “This relationship is an illustration of that.”
China Mobile will leverage Mindspeed technology gained from its $51.8 million buy of U.K.-based Picochip Ltd., which makes systems-on-a-chip for small cellular base stations.
China Mobile, which has more than 618 million subscribers and a 70% market share, plans to extend its trial 4G LTE, or long-term evolution network, to 10 Chinese cities and build 20,000 base stations this year and another 20,000 in 2013.
That’s just a fraction of the 5 million base stations forecasted annually in China by 2017.
The system overhaul is sorely needed for a nation with more than 1 billion mobile phone subscribers pushing demand for streaming video and music, as the proliferation of cloud data and storage escalates.
The move to bolster China’s communications grid is part of a public-private initiative to reduce the country’s reliance on Western technology.
Bits and Pieces
Lake Forest-based Voice Assist Inc. has raised $800,000 in a private stock sale. The proceeds will be used to boost marketing and sales, as well as design work for its voice recognition software targeted for smart phones, cars and other mobile devices. The voice-activated software, carried on Bluetooth Jabra devices, a brand developed by Denmark-based GN Netcom A/S, allows users to browse cloud-based address books, music libraries, update social networking feeds and communicate through customer relationship management, or CRM, software including saleforce.com. … Aliso Viejo-based Smith Micro Software Inc. inked a deal with Irvine-based Boost Mobile LLC, part of Sprint Nextel Corp., that will offer its Visual Voicemail product to subscribers of the wireless provider’s first 4G Android phone, dubbed the HTC EVO Design 4G. The software is carried on 17 million devices. It presents voicemail messages like email. Voicemail-to-text transcription will also be offered for a $1.99 monthly fee.
