Tech Roundup: Infineon to Take its Name Off Raceway, Global Foundries Finally Achieves Independence, and More

Milpitas-based Infineon Technologies has decided not to keep its name on Infineon Raceway in Sonoma County, previously known as Sears Point Raceway before Infineon began its sponsorship. Officials for the raceway are not surprised, though, and say they had known for years that Infineon would not be renewing its sponsorship. Apparently, former executives for Infineon were very involved in racing, but since those execs have been replaced, interest in the motor sport has waned. The raceway is now in the market for a new namesake sponsor. 

Milpitas-based Array Networks announced this week the release of its next-generation AG 1000 Series Secure Access Gateways, designed to more efficiently allow enterprises, mid-market businesses and cloud service providers to securely and cost-effectively meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. In a statement, Array Networks explained its new AG Series “supports up to 256 virtual portals on a single appliance. AG Series virtualization allows enterprises and service providers to create fully separate and fully secure user communities, each with their own look-and-feel and each with their own access policies, access methods and resources for various business units, partners, contractors, guests, administrators and tenants. The AG Series also features a per-user policy engine capable of creating a custom secure access experience for individual users.” The new system is available immediately.

Milpitas-based GlobalFoundries announced it is celebrating its third anniversary in a momentous way—by finally buying back the remaining stakes in its company that are currently held by AMD (Advanced MicroDevices). This will allow the company to finally realize its dream of becoming an independent foundry company. Now, rather than being partially owned by AMD, the company will be wholly owned by Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), with AMD as one of its biggest customers. “Today marks the start of a new era for GlobalFoundries as it becomes a truly independent foundry," said GlobalFoundries CEO Ajit Manocha on Thursday. “GlobalFoundries has a clear vision to be the leading semiconductor foundry partner to AMD and one of the world's top technology companies. We continue to execute on our strategy to propel ATIC's long-term investment philosophy into true value creation for our shareholder and customers.” In Janurary of this year, GlobalFoundries also announced the spending of more than $3 billion in capital to expand facilities in New York, Singapore and Germany.

Milpitas-based social e-mail provider harmon.ie announced this week it has added new social and collaboration capabilities to the free release of its harmon.ie for SharePoint - Outlook Edition product, which provides access to key Microsoft SharePoint functions from Microsoft Outlook for faster use. A harmon.ie-exclusive SharePoint activity stream in the e-mail window now allows teams to follow document updates in real time, creating “social documents'” that expedite project work. New social analytics functionality also helps workers build their SharePoint social network by offering smart colleague suggestions based on actual communication patterns. The company said collaboration is up to six times faster with these new additions.