Company’s Powerline technology praised for flawless performance.
Global networking company NETGEAR has received HardwareHeaven’s ‘recommended’ award for its Powerline 500 Nano (XAVB5101) and Powerline 200 Mini Set (XAVB1301).
HardwareHeaven’s recommended stamp is only awarded to products that rate
highly, scoring eight out of ten or more, in all categories. Both
NETGEAR Powerline products scored nine out of ten to scoop the accolade.
In the review, HardwareHeaven stated: “The NETGEAR Powerline Nano 500
Set and Powerline 200 MiniSet are great for those who want fast easy
access around the home or in rented accommodation where it is not
possible to install dedicated LAN cables and where the wireless
reception is poor.”
The team at HardwareHeaven concluded: “Powerline technology certainly
deserves its place in a modern network infrastructure; we found it to
perform flawlessly while maintaining speeds equal or better than a
10/100 network. Internet access is flawless across all connected
devices.”
NETGEAR’s high-gloss adapters allow an internet connection to be passed through the electrical wires of a house. The Powerline Nano500 Set
and Powerline 200 MiniSet both work out of the box and require no
software; the devices can create a password-protected home network in
seconds.
Rob Wells. Director, Retail Business Unit, NETGEAR, said: “At NETGEAR we
are extremely proud of our Powerline productoffering and are thrilled
with the award fromHardwareHeaven. Our Powerline range is popular
because these products make wireless networking a realistic option for
households.”
You can read the full review here. Find out where you can buy the products here.
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Monday 28 May 2012
Open Source Open Days from Sirius
With the UK in double-dip recession, no let-up in the Government drive for austerity, and the old-fashioned idea of economic growth making a comeback, Western economies have much to learn from the BRICS in utilising Open Source to combine public austerity with private growth. Extensive usage of Open Source is a signature of those economies which are thriving despite the global downturn and contrast markedly with the malaise throughout European economies.
Sirius have helped business and public sector organisations benefit from using Open Source technologies for over a decade and are making that knowledge publicly available to show how, why and where to implement Open Source for maximum impact. Key information in specific technology areas to enable the right technology choices to remain innovative and competitive while drastically cutting cost.
The argument over whether people should be using open source technologies has already been won, now we need to diffuse the fear that exists around where to start or which technologies to look at.
Sirius will be holding a series of open days at their sunny Surrey technology campus. They will focus on specific IT functions and exploring the solutions that are available. Each day will be hosted by experts in the field and will include detailed customer case studies from the customers themselves. Oh yes, and there will be Barbecues by the canal-side.
The first open day is on Friday 1st June and will focus on Open Source Identity Management solutions. If you are interested in attending the event or would like further information about the upcoming programme then please call us on or online at http://www.siriusopensource.com/opendays.
Sunday 27 May 2012
Point to Point Launches New Excel Conversion Tool
Desktop, application and virtualisation specialists, Point to
Point, have announced the launch of ExcelConvert 2010 - a new
spreadsheet migration tool that provides low cost automated conversion
of Microsoft Excel 2003 worksheets to Microsoft Excel 2010. With
ExcelConvert, a migration can be completed in days instead of months,
with pricing starting from just £1 per sheet.
The recent retirement of support for Office 2003 has meant that many organisations without extended support have been finding it difficult to migrate large and complex spreadsheets to Excel 2010. Up until now, organisations have had to upgrade spreadsheets manually, which can involve expensive long-term developer and consultancy contracts and the risk of human error. Now, with the introduction of ExcelConvert, this process can be fully automated, significantly speeding time to conversion. ExcelConvert can be delivered through ExcelConvert’s secure private cloud or onsite, and will be available to purchase through Point to Point as a standalone product or as part of a larger desktop transformation project.
“While the need to test applications when migrating systems is pretty well understood, the file conversion largely gets forgotten about,” explains Steve McGovern, Technical Director for Point to Point. “Traditionally Microsoft has always used the same file formats in creating upgrades which has meant the upgrading of spreadsheets has never really been an issue. Microsoft has changed the file formats, which is creating problems.
"This is particularly true of complicated spreadsheets with embedded macros and links. If you have recorded code or links into a 2003 worksheet and then transfer it across to Office 2010, the system will instead go off looking for the old 2003 worksheet. We have spoken to a number of finance directors, accounts professionals, IT Directors and CIOs, and it is clear that people are crying out for a tool like ExcelConvert. There isn’t anything else in the market that does what we can do so we see great potential in the product.”
Users simply select the worksheets that they want to migrate and ExcelConvert sorts through the data, converts the files and updates any embedded links and macros. It then creates a report to inform the user of the changes that have been made and any issues relating to passwords that might have prevented the completion of the migration. As the tool creates a copy of the spreadsheet, the original remains intact ensuring the integrity of custom macros.
Point to Point provides consultancy around desktop transformation programmes and is currently the sole reseller for ExcelConvert 2010. The technology sits within Point to Point’s Strategic Formation Services (SFS), which is a consultative service developed to provide bespoke assessments of customer environments to help identify and deliver the best desktop and application strategy for their business. SFS engagements typically cover the following five key areas: Technical infrastructure, application discovery, automated compatibility testing, user profiling and reporting. Now, with the introduction of ExcelConvert 2010, Point to Point will be able to extend its service offering to include data migration for Excel. Pat McSwiggan, Founder of ExcelConvert, comments:
“Our message is simple - when you are migrating to Windows 7, don’t forget the data, and we feel that Point to Point is the perfect strategic partner to take this message to market. They are already leaders in the space of desktop transformation and are working with companies to help solve the desktop migration challenge, and ExcelConvert is ideally placed to fit into this service. They provide us with an established userbase and route to market, we provide them with competitive edge through the ability to offer data migration as well as application and infrastructure support, it’s a win:win!”
To learn more about ExcelConvert 2010 please visit the Point to Point website at: http://ptop.co.uk/solutions-and-technology/excelconvert/
The recent retirement of support for Office 2003 has meant that many organisations without extended support have been finding it difficult to migrate large and complex spreadsheets to Excel 2010. Up until now, organisations have had to upgrade spreadsheets manually, which can involve expensive long-term developer and consultancy contracts and the risk of human error. Now, with the introduction of ExcelConvert, this process can be fully automated, significantly speeding time to conversion. ExcelConvert can be delivered through ExcelConvert’s secure private cloud or onsite, and will be available to purchase through Point to Point as a standalone product or as part of a larger desktop transformation project.
“While the need to test applications when migrating systems is pretty well understood, the file conversion largely gets forgotten about,” explains Steve McGovern, Technical Director for Point to Point. “Traditionally Microsoft has always used the same file formats in creating upgrades which has meant the upgrading of spreadsheets has never really been an issue. Microsoft has changed the file formats, which is creating problems.
"This is particularly true of complicated spreadsheets with embedded macros and links. If you have recorded code or links into a 2003 worksheet and then transfer it across to Office 2010, the system will instead go off looking for the old 2003 worksheet. We have spoken to a number of finance directors, accounts professionals, IT Directors and CIOs, and it is clear that people are crying out for a tool like ExcelConvert. There isn’t anything else in the market that does what we can do so we see great potential in the product.”
Users simply select the worksheets that they want to migrate and ExcelConvert sorts through the data, converts the files and updates any embedded links and macros. It then creates a report to inform the user of the changes that have been made and any issues relating to passwords that might have prevented the completion of the migration. As the tool creates a copy of the spreadsheet, the original remains intact ensuring the integrity of custom macros.
Point to Point provides consultancy around desktop transformation programmes and is currently the sole reseller for ExcelConvert 2010. The technology sits within Point to Point’s Strategic Formation Services (SFS), which is a consultative service developed to provide bespoke assessments of customer environments to help identify and deliver the best desktop and application strategy for their business. SFS engagements typically cover the following five key areas: Technical infrastructure, application discovery, automated compatibility testing, user profiling and reporting. Now, with the introduction of ExcelConvert 2010, Point to Point will be able to extend its service offering to include data migration for Excel. Pat McSwiggan, Founder of ExcelConvert, comments:
“Our message is simple - when you are migrating to Windows 7, don’t forget the data, and we feel that Point to Point is the perfect strategic partner to take this message to market. They are already leaders in the space of desktop transformation and are working with companies to help solve the desktop migration challenge, and ExcelConvert is ideally placed to fit into this service. They provide us with an established userbase and route to market, we provide them with competitive edge through the ability to offer data migration as well as application and infrastructure support, it’s a win:win!”
To learn more about ExcelConvert 2010 please visit the Point to Point website at: http://ptop.co.uk/solutions-and-technology/excelconvert/
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Splunk Wins 2012 SC Award for Best Enterprise Security Solution
Splunk® Inc., a top provider of software for
real-time operational intelligence, has announced that it company has
been recognised as the ‘Best Enterprise Security Solution’ by SC Awards
Europe 2012.
The SC Awards Europe recognised Splunk as a company providing excellence and innovation in every aspect of IT security. Paul Fisher, editor for SC Magazine commented, “The SC Awards Europe are without peer - simply the most coveted and prestigious awards for the information security industry. Our awards honor professionals working to secure enterprises of all sizes and the vendors that deliver innovative security technologies.”
“Security professionals have been frustrated at the limitations of traditional security tools used for collecting, monitoring and analysing machine data, regardless of source, type or scale. Splunk has proven key in identifying unknown security threats and advanced persistent threats, as well as for forensic investigations and monitoring for known threats,” said Splunk Chief Marketing Officer Steve Sommer. “Splunk's selection by SC Awards Europe as the Best Enterprise Security Solution is recognition of the value Splunk brings to cyber-security, including big data analytics. Splunk’s ability to manage machine data beyond traditional security silos provides users with the ability to lower their risk through monitoring and detecting sophisticated attacks, helping uncover complex fraud scenarios and faster forensic investigations.”
The annual SC Awards Europe highlight and showcase the best solutions, services, and professionals, while recognising achievement and technical excellence in the information security industry in Europe. Hundreds of entries were submitted for 27 possible awards in three categories – professional, technology, and industry.
The award was recently announced at the SC Awards Europe gala dinner at the London Hilton during the Infosecurity Europe exhibition. For more information and a detailed list of categories and winners, please visit http://www.scawardseurope.com/.
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Xbox 360 Top of the Consoles, Endsleigh Insurance Reveals
Latest research from Endsleigh’s Fantime Friday campaign suggests the Xbox is a more popular choice than the PlayStation 3.
According to Endsleigh’s most recent survey, over 60% of people would prefer to own an Xbox360, while only 30% of peopled asked, would choose to game with PlayStation. This latest research shows how Xbox 360 is twice as popular as its current rival. Shockingly fewer than 7% of people wanted to own a Nintendo Wii as a first choice, and less than 2% liked the idea of owning the PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS.
For a long time, Microsoft and Sony have been rivals over two of the biggest gaming consoles on the market, but recent research carried out by Endsleigh Insurance shows that the Xbox 360 is currently the UK population’s favourite gaming device.
Mike Day, of Endsleigh Insurance, said: “It’s interesting to know that more of our population are leaning towards the Xbox 360, with gaming and gadget popularity rapidly expanding , it’s important that people have the correct insurance policies in place to protect their gaming goods.
“Our results from the Fantime Friday campaign polls show that the rise in the use of technology across the UK has increased significantly, and here at Endsleigh we are on hand to offer advice and insurance policies to fit the needs of our public.”
The Xbox vs. PlayStation debate has been flooding the gaming and online world for years. Initially the PlayStation 3 was pricier, but boasted better hardware and free online features, compared to its competitor. However, the Xbox 360 was dubbed for giving the better online gaming experience out of the two. Critics generally argue that both have their pros and cons, and choosing a gaming device is now a lifestyle choice based solely on brand loyalty and experience.
A series of polls are being carried out as part of a wider Facebook campaign, aimed at reminding students of the importance of insurance. The campaign ‘Fantime Friday’ offers people the chance to win a series of gadgets and gizmos through interacting on the Facebook page, where they can also get information on latest news and offer.
According to Endsleigh’s most recent survey, over 60% of people would prefer to own an Xbox360, while only 30% of peopled asked, would choose to game with PlayStation. This latest research shows how Xbox 360 is twice as popular as its current rival. Shockingly fewer than 7% of people wanted to own a Nintendo Wii as a first choice, and less than 2% liked the idea of owning the PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS.
For a long time, Microsoft and Sony have been rivals over two of the biggest gaming consoles on the market, but recent research carried out by Endsleigh Insurance shows that the Xbox 360 is currently the UK population’s favourite gaming device.
Mike Day, of Endsleigh Insurance, said: “It’s interesting to know that more of our population are leaning towards the Xbox 360, with gaming and gadget popularity rapidly expanding , it’s important that people have the correct insurance policies in place to protect their gaming goods.
“Our results from the Fantime Friday campaign polls show that the rise in the use of technology across the UK has increased significantly, and here at Endsleigh we are on hand to offer advice and insurance policies to fit the needs of our public.”
The Xbox vs. PlayStation debate has been flooding the gaming and online world for years. Initially the PlayStation 3 was pricier, but boasted better hardware and free online features, compared to its competitor. However, the Xbox 360 was dubbed for giving the better online gaming experience out of the two. Critics generally argue that both have their pros and cons, and choosing a gaming device is now a lifestyle choice based solely on brand loyalty and experience.
A series of polls are being carried out as part of a wider Facebook campaign, aimed at reminding students of the importance of insurance. The campaign ‘Fantime Friday’ offers people the chance to win a series of gadgets and gizmos through interacting on the Facebook page, where they can also get information on latest news and offer.
Thursday 24 May 2012
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Wednesday 16 May 2012
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Trustmarque's Nimbus Mobile Device Management Service
Infrastructure and software solutions Value Added Reseller, Trustmarque, today announced an agreement with IT security and data protection company, Sophos, to provide a managed service to protect mobile devices. Using mobile data management (MDM) technology developed by DIALOGS, which was recently acquired by Sophos, the ‘Nimbus Mobile Device Management (MDM)’ solution offers over-the-air control for mobile business devices to ensure the enforcement of data protection, policy compliance and application management, allowing businesses to fully secure and remotely monitor mobile devices on their networks.
Robert Newburn, Head of Information Security & Managed Services at Trustmarque commented: “Laptops used to be the thorn in a security professional’s side, but more and more, it is devices such as smartphones that are posing the problem. They are easily lost, damaged or stolen; they hold as much information as your company laptop, but they are rarely as well protected. By delivering Sophos security through the cloud, we can offer a responsive and flexible managed service whereby users can take control of their mobile devices by simply logging on to a web browser.”
The Sophos solution, Sophos Mobile Control, provides protection for all popular business devices, including iPhones, iPads, Android, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile. It enables access to a central role-based web console, which is simple to use and can remotely locate, lock and wipe devices within seconds to prevent data loss and security breaches. The tool can also be used to enforce security policies. For example, it can activate security features, such as a device password lock, preventing users from having the option of turning them off. Or it can control what applications users can or should have installed on their device. An at-a-glance mobile inventory shows all registered devices, including their settings and configurations, and flags non-compliant devices.
The Nimbus MDM team will work with customers to help define security policy around mobile devices, and use the Sophos technology to enforce these procedures through remote monitoring and policy setting. The solution also supports multi-tenancy, allowing management over multiple independent sites, from a single Mobile Control dashboard.
Trustmarque anticipate high demand for the solution: “Whether you have 10 or 10,000 devices, they need to be properly protected,” Newburn continues. “With the growing ‘Bring Your Own Device’ culture, and the increased functionality of these devices, this is a real and pressing security issue that customers should be taking steps to address. It is rare these days that I have a conversation with a customer and they don’t want to talk about MDM. This new service will provide businesses with the ability to offer employees the latest technology, which they use every day in both a work and personal capacity, while still ensuring data remains safe. As a well-known and respected vendor, Sophos provides the advanced technology, which underpins this service.”
Neil Furby, Cloud Services Business Development Manager for Sophos commented, “We have a long-standing relationship with Trustmarque, and their expertise in the security space made them the obvious partner to work with on an MDM managed service. Mobile device management is a huge issue for customers and with Trustmarque’s strong cloud heritage and technical capability, our companies will provide customers with robust and flexible protection for mobile devices.”
Trustmarque was awarded supplier status in the government’s new public sector procurement Cloudstore in February 2012; and offers six specialist cloud services that are available from Trustmarque via the Cloudstore.
For more information about Trustmarque visit www.trustmarque.com, call 0845 2101 500, or email: info@trustmarque.com.
Cybher, the event for women who blog
On Saturday 12th May 2012,
central London was alive as 300 of the most influential bloggers and
speakers from all corners of the blogosphere attended Cybher, the first all-inclusive female blogger event of its kind in the UK.
Speakers included Zoe Margolis (Girl with a one track mind), Mario Cacciottolo (Someone Once Told Me), Poppy Dinsey (What I wore today), Liz Scarff (Blogladesh, World Vision), Natalie Lue (Baggage Reclaim) and our youngest speaker, Siân’s daughter the 10 year old Biba (bibasphotos.com).
The event caused a monumental ground swell on social media channels with the #Cybher tag trending on Twitter a full three hours before the event kicked off. Throughout the day there were upwards of 4,500 tweets with a reach of around 5 million people.
400 Instagram photos were posted and 85 post conference blog posts have already been logged!
Cybher offered a vast range of workshops and sessions that people genuinely enjoyed. These social savvy women are hungry for knowledge and ways to develop the core content of their blogs.
Organiser Siân To said: “I have been absolutely blown away by the effect Cybher has had on the UK blogging community. We came together as a group of women and we went away enlightened, inspired and full of ideas. It’s amazing that we 300 women have such a powerful voice. The day was an outstanding success.”
From the attendees…
@BigFashionista (Kellie Hill) tweeted: This week is ALL about moving my blog on to the next level. #Cybher has inspired me.
@Fiestytapas (Maria) tweeted: My timeline is still full of #Cybher. The conference that still has the blogger world buzzing.
@liveotherwise (Jax Blunt) tweeted: Blogging conferences have come of age. This has been stunning. #cybher
@SamRSparrow (Samantha Sparrow) tweeted: So I’m actually crying on the tube home. A bit overwhelmed to be honest. May sound like an eejit, but it’s been a huge step for us. #Cybher
@kateagreen (Kate Green) #Cybher was fantastic yesterday, feeling all geared up & inspired by SO many things! @Geekisnewchic thank you!
The Founder
Cybher is the brainchild of award winning blogger Siân To who after 15 years of PR experience went social when she started blogging in 2009. In January 2010 she founded CyberMummy and in August that year she embarked on a life changing journey as an ambassador for Save the Children, that took her from the slums of Bangladesh to the UN summit in New York and tea at Downing Street.
On Sunday Siân will be flying off to Niger as an ambassador for Cybher sponsors, World Vision. Through her trip Siân will be raising awareness of the pre-famine emergency that is currently crippling that part of Africa. You can follow the trip on Twitter using the #ShareNiger tag.
Siân’s blogs are also in the running for a few national blogger awards. In the MAD (Mum & Dad) Awards, Mummy-Tips.com is shortlisted for most helpful blogger and Geekisnewchic.com is shortlisted for Best Fashion Blog.
In the Bibs (Brilliance in Blogging) Awards, Geekisnewchic.com is shortlisted for best Style blog.
Speakers included Zoe Margolis (Girl with a one track mind), Mario Cacciottolo (Someone Once Told Me), Poppy Dinsey (What I wore today), Liz Scarff (Blogladesh, World Vision), Natalie Lue (Baggage Reclaim) and our youngest speaker, Siân’s daughter the 10 year old Biba (bibasphotos.com).
The event caused a monumental ground swell on social media channels with the #Cybher tag trending on Twitter a full three hours before the event kicked off. Throughout the day there were upwards of 4,500 tweets with a reach of around 5 million people.
400 Instagram photos were posted and 85 post conference blog posts have already been logged!
Cybher offered a vast range of workshops and sessions that people genuinely enjoyed. These social savvy women are hungry for knowledge and ways to develop the core content of their blogs.
Organiser Siân To said: “I have been absolutely blown away by the effect Cybher has had on the UK blogging community. We came together as a group of women and we went away enlightened, inspired and full of ideas. It’s amazing that we 300 women have such a powerful voice. The day was an outstanding success.”
From the attendees…
@BigFashionista (Kellie Hill) tweeted: This week is ALL about moving my blog on to the next level. #Cybher has inspired me.
@Fiestytapas (Maria) tweeted: My timeline is still full of #Cybher. The conference that still has the blogger world buzzing.
@liveotherwise (Jax Blunt) tweeted: Blogging conferences have come of age. This has been stunning. #cybher
@SamRSparrow (Samantha Sparrow) tweeted: So I’m actually crying on the tube home. A bit overwhelmed to be honest. May sound like an eejit, but it’s been a huge step for us. #Cybher
@kateagreen (Kate Green) #Cybher was fantastic yesterday, feeling all geared up & inspired by SO many things! @Geekisnewchic thank you!
The Founder
Cybher is the brainchild of award winning blogger Siân To who after 15 years of PR experience went social when she started blogging in 2009. In January 2010 she founded CyberMummy and in August that year she embarked on a life changing journey as an ambassador for Save the Children, that took her from the slums of Bangladesh to the UN summit in New York and tea at Downing Street.
On Sunday Siân will be flying off to Niger as an ambassador for Cybher sponsors, World Vision. Through her trip Siân will be raising awareness of the pre-famine emergency that is currently crippling that part of Africa. You can follow the trip on Twitter using the #ShareNiger tag.
Siân’s blogs are also in the running for a few national blogger awards. In the MAD (Mum & Dad) Awards, Mummy-Tips.com is shortlisted for most helpful blogger and Geekisnewchic.com is shortlisted for Best Fashion Blog.
In the Bibs (Brilliance in Blogging) Awards, Geekisnewchic.com is shortlisted for best Style blog.
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Actuate and Hortonworks Collaborate to Visualise Big Data
Actuate Corporation, the
people behind BIRT® and the leading open source Business Intelligence
(BI) vendor, today announced a collaboration between Actuate BIRT and
the Hortonworks Data Platform, to enable Big Data visualisation. The
Hortonworks Data Platform is a completely open source, tightly
integrated and tested distribution of Apache Hadoop, backed by extensive
customer support and training.
The ActuateOne® integrated product suite, built around BIRT, uses native access Hive query to leverage MapReduce functions to extract data from Hadoop, pulling those data sets into customisable BIRT-based dashboards and scorecards for interactive visualisation and analysis.
“We have dedicated significant resources to make Apache Hadoop more robust and easier to integrate, extend, deploy and use,” said John Kreisa, VP of Marketing at Hortonworks. “{{Our partnership with open source BI leader Actuate enables more users to cost effectively analyse vast amounts of data}}stored in Hadoop using open source technologies.”
“Actuate’s collaboration with Hortonworks will ease the transition from Big Data hype to Big Data usefulness,” said Nobby Akiha, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Actuate. “We believe the key to success with Big Data lies in building the right infrastructure to manage it. Teaming with Hortonworks will further our goal of helping organisations figure out how best to leverage and integrate Big Data sources to enable better decision making.”
Large organisations are increasingly turning to Apache Hadoop for the storage and management of massive amounts of data and thus need scalable ways to explore, analyse and visualise the insights stored within it. The combination of the Hortonworks Data Platform’s distributed processing of Hadoop data sources of any size, with Actuate’s scalable infrastructure and intuitive data visualisation capabilities, enables organisations to more effectively operationalise Big Data for thousands of customers, partners and employees.
Hortonworks is a leading commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, the preeminent open source platform for storing, managing, and analyzing large volumes of data. The Hortonworks Data Platform provides an open and stable foundation for enterprises and a growing ecosystem to build and deploy big data solutions. Together with the Apache community, Hortonworks is making Hadoop more robust and easier to install, manage, and use. Hortonworks provides unmatched technical support, training and certification programs for enterprises, systems integrators, and technology vendors. For more information, visit www.hortonworks.com.
The ActuateOne® integrated product suite, built around BIRT, uses native access Hive query to leverage MapReduce functions to extract data from Hadoop, pulling those data sets into customisable BIRT-based dashboards and scorecards for interactive visualisation and analysis.
“We have dedicated significant resources to make Apache Hadoop more robust and easier to integrate, extend, deploy and use,” said John Kreisa, VP of Marketing at Hortonworks. “{{Our partnership with open source BI leader Actuate enables more users to cost effectively analyse vast amounts of data}}stored in Hadoop using open source technologies.”
“Actuate’s collaboration with Hortonworks will ease the transition from Big Data hype to Big Data usefulness,” said Nobby Akiha, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Actuate. “We believe the key to success with Big Data lies in building the right infrastructure to manage it. Teaming with Hortonworks will further our goal of helping organisations figure out how best to leverage and integrate Big Data sources to enable better decision making.”
Large organisations are increasingly turning to Apache Hadoop for the storage and management of massive amounts of data and thus need scalable ways to explore, analyse and visualise the insights stored within it. The combination of the Hortonworks Data Platform’s distributed processing of Hadoop data sources of any size, with Actuate’s scalable infrastructure and intuitive data visualisation capabilities, enables organisations to more effectively operationalise Big Data for thousands of customers, partners and employees.
Hortonworks is a leading commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, the preeminent open source platform for storing, managing, and analyzing large volumes of data. The Hortonworks Data Platform provides an open and stable foundation for enterprises and a growing ecosystem to build and deploy big data solutions. Together with the Apache community, Hortonworks is making Hadoop more robust and easier to install, manage, and use. Hortonworks provides unmatched technical support, training and certification programs for enterprises, systems integrators, and technology vendors. For more information, visit www.hortonworks.com.
Contensis signs money-saving agreement with Manchester councils
In this ‘age of austerity’, Contensis has signed a money-saving agreement with public authorities in Greater Manchester.
The framework agreement with AGMA – the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities – could see possibly up to 18 councils and other local public bodies signing-up to use the Contensis web content management system.
Public procurement is an expensive business and when Government is trying to improve efficiency and make saving throughout the public sector, framework agreements are one area which can help.
With AGMA, it was decided to initially procure a CMS solution for both Wigan and Trafford councils, with the opportunity to open this up to any of the other member and associate organisations.
Each AGMA member can now be assured that all the due diligence, quality checks and value for money considerations have been done, and they can join the framework without the need for an expensive procurement process of their own.
This not only saves them money but saves Contensis money as well by not having to pitch to individual authorities – and this means that significant discounts can be passed on to the AGMA members.
Rarely is there such a ‘win win’ situation!
Adam Green, the Contensis local government account manager, pointed out: “After such a great year in the public sector, from seeing a successful migration and exciting channel shift figures from Staffordshire County Council through to the No.1 positioning for Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC in Sitemorse, we are hoping to help the new members of the Contensis fold make some real difference and save some real money.”
The framework agreement with AGMA – the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities – could see possibly up to 18 councils and other local public bodies signing-up to use the Contensis web content management system.
Public procurement is an expensive business and when Government is trying to improve efficiency and make saving throughout the public sector, framework agreements are one area which can help.
With AGMA, it was decided to initially procure a CMS solution for both Wigan and Trafford councils, with the opportunity to open this up to any of the other member and associate organisations.
Each AGMA member can now be assured that all the due diligence, quality checks and value for money considerations have been done, and they can join the framework without the need for an expensive procurement process of their own.
This not only saves them money but saves Contensis money as well by not having to pitch to individual authorities – and this means that significant discounts can be passed on to the AGMA members.
Rarely is there such a ‘win win’ situation!
Adam Green, the Contensis local government account manager, pointed out: “After such a great year in the public sector, from seeing a successful migration and exciting channel shift figures from Staffordshire County Council through to the No.1 positioning for Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC in Sitemorse, we are hoping to help the new members of the Contensis fold make some real difference and save some real money.”
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SEPATON Data Protection Index finds managing data centre ‘sprawl’ and improving backup efficiency key concerns
SEPATON,
the only company in the world that delivers disk-based data protection
solutions specifically designed for large enterprises, today announced
the results of the SEPATON Data Protection Index, an annual survey of
large enterprises with at least 1,000 employees and at least 50
terabytes of primary data to protect. The survey was conducted in April
2012 and elicited responses from 93 IT professionals across a wide
range of vertical industries in both Europe and North America.
The objective of the SEPATON Data Protection Index was to understand some of the data protection issues and concerns facing today’s large enterprises with big backup environments and the trends that matter most to enterprise managers.
Key findings include:
• Enterprises continue to face the challenges of protecting enormous data volumes and handling rapid data growth. Data growth continues unabated with fifty percent of respondents reporting their data was growing from twenty to seventy percent annually while an additional twenty percent reported even higher annual growth rates
• Data centres now face a growing challenge of ‘sprawl’ as they add more and more systems to handle data growth. Fifty percent characterise their environments as having “moderate” or “severe” sprawl requiring them to routinely add data protection systems to scale performance or capacity
• Increasing capacity and performance of data protection systems are the top priorities for the coming months. Fast growing data volumes and data centre sprawl are driving a need for scalable high performance
• Improving efficiency of the big backup environment also a key priority. Data centres need a way to ensure they are getting the most value from their backup environment. Deduplication is either not being used at all on databases (thirty-eight percent) or not seen as adequately controlling data growth and capacity costs associated with databases (twenty-six percent) in large enterprises
“As the survey report reveals, respondents reported a marked increase in annual data growth. Nearly one quarter of respondents reported twenty-five percent higher growth rate compared to last year,” said Joe Forgione, senior vice president, product operations and business development, SEPATON.
“One of the consequences of this accelerating data growth is data centre ‘sprawl’ as enterprise IT departments with non-scalable data protection systems are forced to add new systems to scale capacity or performance. We expect an increase in the need to replace siloed systems with scalable data protection platforms and better deduplication solutions to address data capacity growth.”
For more details, download the full survey report at http://go.sepaton.com/2012SurveyResultsVol1.html
The objective of the SEPATON Data Protection Index was to understand some of the data protection issues and concerns facing today’s large enterprises with big backup environments and the trends that matter most to enterprise managers.
Key findings include:
• Enterprises continue to face the challenges of protecting enormous data volumes and handling rapid data growth. Data growth continues unabated with fifty percent of respondents reporting their data was growing from twenty to seventy percent annually while an additional twenty percent reported even higher annual growth rates
• Data centres now face a growing challenge of ‘sprawl’ as they add more and more systems to handle data growth. Fifty percent characterise their environments as having “moderate” or “severe” sprawl requiring them to routinely add data protection systems to scale performance or capacity
• Increasing capacity and performance of data protection systems are the top priorities for the coming months. Fast growing data volumes and data centre sprawl are driving a need for scalable high performance
• Improving efficiency of the big backup environment also a key priority. Data centres need a way to ensure they are getting the most value from their backup environment. Deduplication is either not being used at all on databases (thirty-eight percent) or not seen as adequately controlling data growth and capacity costs associated with databases (twenty-six percent) in large enterprises
“As the survey report reveals, respondents reported a marked increase in annual data growth. Nearly one quarter of respondents reported twenty-five percent higher growth rate compared to last year,” said Joe Forgione, senior vice president, product operations and business development, SEPATON.
“One of the consequences of this accelerating data growth is data centre ‘sprawl’ as enterprise IT departments with non-scalable data protection systems are forced to add new systems to scale capacity or performance. We expect an increase in the need to replace siloed systems with scalable data protection platforms and better deduplication solutions to address data capacity growth.”
For more details, download the full survey report at http://go.sepaton.com/2012SurveyResultsVol1.html
Monday 14 May 2012
MERETHIS Chooses ActuateOne to Extend Centreon BI Beyond Open Source Eclipse BIRT
MERETHIS Centreon Software Suite Uses ActuateOne for Interactive Visualisation of IT Infrastructure and Application Monitoring
Actuate Corporation, The people behind BIRT® and the leading open source Business Intelligence (BI) vendor, today announced that MERETHIS, the company behind the open source monitoring platform Centreon, has extended from Open Source Eclipse BIRT to ActuateOne® to meet its clients’ evolving information visualisation and analysis needs.
From open source Eclipse BIRT to ActuateOne
Since its release in 2009, Centreon BI has used open source BIRT from Eclipse. In response to rapidly changing customer requirements for additional BI functionality, including advanced interactive report development and customisation tools, MERETHIS decided to upgrade Centreon BI to ActuateOne. ActuateOne provides value added capabilities for BIRT and will enable MERETHIS to offer more innovative, user friendly functionality to its Centreon end users, helping them to become more efficient.
“Centreon BI, now based on ActuateOne, will provide users with interactive viewing and customisation functionality, with high usability and interactivity over the web,” commented Julien Mathis, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer at MERETHIS. “The update is designed to make it easier to build customised operational or analytical dashboards for large data volumes.”
Centreon BI: Optimal Performance for Information Systems
Centreon BI summarises the changes and trends in information system activity and analyses the information using packaged templates or customised dashboards, helping businesses to respond appropriately.
“By enhancing Centreon with ActuateOne, organisations can take advantage of a single, integrated tool to monitor network domains, servers and critical business applications, and also generate and disseminate in-depth and modular reports via all channels,” said Mat Sugumaran, Head of MERETHIS’ BI project. “Centreon BI effectively manages information systems by measuring performance using indicators and dashboards.”
“We are excited to add MERETHIS to the growing number of ISVs that are upgrading to ActuateOne after working with open source BIRT,” said David Armstrong, VP of OEM and SaaS at Actuate Corporation. “Actuate’s OEM customers have experienced dramatic increases in adoption of their BIRT-based applications by garnering enthusiastic customer reception to the interactive, highly intuitive interfaces ActuateOne enables. We have no doubt that the market reception for Centreon BI will be positive.”
Actuate – The People behind BIRT
Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project. ActuateOne® is a unified suite of products for rapidly developing and deploying BIRT-based custom Business Intelligence applications and information applications. Applications built with ActuateOne provide one user experience regardless of task or skill level; are supported by one server for any deployment including cloud and are built with one BIRT design that can access and integrate any data source - including high volume print streams. ActuateOne adds rich data visualisations, including interactivity, dashboards, analytics, and deployment options to web and mobile BIRT applications, helping organisations drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction and improved operational performance.
Actuate has over 5,000 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com or visit the BIRT community at www.birt-exchange.com.
FACTFILE:
MERETHIS is a French company specialised in IT monitoring.
Born in 2003, under the name of Oreon, Centreon was intended to supply an interface of configuration to Nagios©. In order to structure all the realisations and numerous users' requests, MERETHIS becomes in 2005, the software provider of Centreon. This major step allows the project to evolve at the international level and it is during that period that it takes the new name of Centreon. With over 45 000 users and 90 committers, Centreon software suite has been a huge success. Evolving from its first goal, Centreon is now dedicated to IT infrastructure and application monitoring for service performance.
In order to offer all the essential necessary features required for a professional service availability and network performance monitoring, the Centreon software suite has been evolving to meet the needs of the most demanding Information Systems Division while bringing the flexibility of Open Source Software.
• Centreon BAM : Improve quality of service (SLA) by monitoring and analysing the operation of your business processes
• Centreon MAP: studio for mapping applications and infrastructure components
• Centreon BI : Design and create decision-making tools you can use to analyze and share the activity of your information system
• In 2011 MERETHIS released CES (Centreon Enterprise Sever). CES provides pre-configured out-of-the-box tools to automate the monitoring of essential system resources deploy alert management and business service management and set up your monitoring portal and console.
More at: www.centreon.com
Actuate Corporation, The people behind BIRT® and the leading open source Business Intelligence (BI) vendor, today announced that MERETHIS, the company behind the open source monitoring platform Centreon, has extended from Open Source Eclipse BIRT to ActuateOne® to meet its clients’ evolving information visualisation and analysis needs.
From open source Eclipse BIRT to ActuateOne
Since its release in 2009, Centreon BI has used open source BIRT from Eclipse. In response to rapidly changing customer requirements for additional BI functionality, including advanced interactive report development and customisation tools, MERETHIS decided to upgrade Centreon BI to ActuateOne. ActuateOne provides value added capabilities for BIRT and will enable MERETHIS to offer more innovative, user friendly functionality to its Centreon end users, helping them to become more efficient.
“Centreon BI, now based on ActuateOne, will provide users with interactive viewing and customisation functionality, with high usability and interactivity over the web,” commented Julien Mathis, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer at MERETHIS. “The update is designed to make it easier to build customised operational or analytical dashboards for large data volumes.”
Centreon BI: Optimal Performance for Information Systems
Centreon BI summarises the changes and trends in information system activity and analyses the information using packaged templates or customised dashboards, helping businesses to respond appropriately.
“By enhancing Centreon with ActuateOne, organisations can take advantage of a single, integrated tool to monitor network domains, servers and critical business applications, and also generate and disseminate in-depth and modular reports via all channels,” said Mat Sugumaran, Head of MERETHIS’ BI project. “Centreon BI effectively manages information systems by measuring performance using indicators and dashboards.”
“We are excited to add MERETHIS to the growing number of ISVs that are upgrading to ActuateOne after working with open source BIRT,” said David Armstrong, VP of OEM and SaaS at Actuate Corporation. “Actuate’s OEM customers have experienced dramatic increases in adoption of their BIRT-based applications by garnering enthusiastic customer reception to the interactive, highly intuitive interfaces ActuateOne enables. We have no doubt that the market reception for Centreon BI will be positive.”
Actuate – The People behind BIRT
Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project. ActuateOne® is a unified suite of products for rapidly developing and deploying BIRT-based custom Business Intelligence applications and information applications. Applications built with ActuateOne provide one user experience regardless of task or skill level; are supported by one server for any deployment including cloud and are built with one BIRT design that can access and integrate any data source - including high volume print streams. ActuateOne adds rich data visualisations, including interactivity, dashboards, analytics, and deployment options to web and mobile BIRT applications, helping organisations drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction and improved operational performance.
Actuate has over 5,000 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com or visit the BIRT community at www.birt-exchange.com.
FACTFILE:
MERETHIS is a French company specialised in IT monitoring.
Born in 2003, under the name of Oreon, Centreon was intended to supply an interface of configuration to Nagios©. In order to structure all the realisations and numerous users' requests, MERETHIS becomes in 2005, the software provider of Centreon. This major step allows the project to evolve at the international level and it is during that period that it takes the new name of Centreon. With over 45 000 users and 90 committers, Centreon software suite has been a huge success. Evolving from its first goal, Centreon is now dedicated to IT infrastructure and application monitoring for service performance.
In order to offer all the essential necessary features required for a professional service availability and network performance monitoring, the Centreon software suite has been evolving to meet the needs of the most demanding Information Systems Division while bringing the flexibility of Open Source Software.
• Centreon BAM : Improve quality of service (SLA) by monitoring and analysing the operation of your business processes
• Centreon MAP: studio for mapping applications and infrastructure components
• Centreon BI : Design and create decision-making tools you can use to analyze and share the activity of your information system
• In 2011 MERETHIS released CES (Centreon Enterprise Sever). CES provides pre-configured out-of-the-box tools to automate the monitoring of essential system resources deploy alert management and business service management and set up your monitoring portal and console.
More at: www.centreon.com
iPad Catalog category sees 330% rise in catalog app downloads
YUDU Media,
the award-winning provider of digital publishing solutions, has
released its first performance stats since the launch of Apple’s iPad
Catalog category on March 7th 2012.
The stats show that retailers are seeing significant increases in the rate of daily iPad catalog app downloads, averaging a 330% rise across YUDU Media’s portfolio of retail clients.
With YUDU Media producing many of the US’s top iPad catalogs (including Lands’ End, dELiA*s, Alloy, L.L.Bean & Coldwater Creek) as well as digital catalogs for leading UK retailers such as Littlewoods, Lakeland and Very, the company is confident the figures are indicative of a wider download trend within Apple’s iPad Catalog category.
Richard Stephenson, CEO of YUDU Media, says: “Catalog apps used to be lost within Apple’s Lifestyle category and app downloads were limited by lack of discovery. However, with the launch of Apple’s Catalog category, catalog apps are now far more visible. This is reflected in a huge rise in the number of daily downloads, some retailers seeing rises of over 500%.”
Stephenson continues, “this is further good news for retailers as iPad catalog basket sizes are, on average, 50% higher than retailers’ own website shopping carts.”
For further information on iPad catalogs please watch the YUDU Media iPad catalog video by clicking here.
(EDITOR: One of my clients uses YUDU. They can be heartily recommended.)
The stats show that retailers are seeing significant increases in the rate of daily iPad catalog app downloads, averaging a 330% rise across YUDU Media’s portfolio of retail clients.
With YUDU Media producing many of the US’s top iPad catalogs (including Lands’ End, dELiA*s, Alloy, L.L.Bean & Coldwater Creek) as well as digital catalogs for leading UK retailers such as Littlewoods, Lakeland and Very, the company is confident the figures are indicative of a wider download trend within Apple’s iPad Catalog category.
Richard Stephenson, CEO of YUDU Media, says: “Catalog apps used to be lost within Apple’s Lifestyle category and app downloads were limited by lack of discovery. However, with the launch of Apple’s Catalog category, catalog apps are now far more visible. This is reflected in a huge rise in the number of daily downloads, some retailers seeing rises of over 500%.”
Stephenson continues, “this is further good news for retailers as iPad catalog basket sizes are, on average, 50% higher than retailers’ own website shopping carts.”
For further information on iPad catalogs please watch the YUDU Media iPad catalog video by clicking here.
(EDITOR: One of my clients uses YUDU. They can be heartily recommended.)
M2M Managed Services Specialist Wireless Logic in UK and European moves
- Board appoints new CFO and CTO to support UK and continental Europe expansion
- Year on year base growth exceeds 41%
With growth across Europea a major strategic objective for UK-based M2M Managed Services Specialist Wireless Logic (www.wirelesslogic.com), the organisation has made a number of senior appointments. Country managers now head up new subsidiaries in France, Germany and Spain where focus will be made on rolling out Wireless Logic’s aggregated business model - multiple network M2M SIM connectivity backed by a range of award-winning managed services and platforms.
Philip Cole, Co-founder and Sales & Marketing Director, EMEA Wireless Logic says: “With market growth rates of 27% from 2012 -2016 (Source – ABI Research), we are committed to developing our presence across a number of key European countries. We’ve brought in a team of sector professionals who can deliver the value-add that Wireless Logic offers. Our growth remains strong with 41% year on year increase and a forecast of over one million contracted M2M SIMs during 2012".
Back in the UK, Wireless Logic’s board has been bolstered by the arrival of Richard Miller as Chief Financial Officer, and Matt Thomas as Chief Technology Officer. Managing Director and co-founder Oliver Tucker, Wireless Logic comments: “These two board level appointments demonstrate the strength we now have in creating a global managed services provider. Richard Miller joins from PwC where he played a huge role in bringing our recent MBO to fruition with ECI Partners (www.ecipartners.com). Richard will be pursuing a number of acquisition opportunities as part of our growth strategy. Matt Thomas will head up our technology team; his remit includes further evolvement of our dedicated M2M platform ‘SIMpro’ including software licensing opportunities as well as adding an additional layer of customer-focused services.”
The expansion into continental Europe and an enhanced board coincide with Wireless Logic’s UK Headquarters and Technology Centre relocating to Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, just 26 miles west of Central London. Oliver Tucker continues: “2012 has already seen considerable investment across our people, our office infrastructure and upgrades to our M2M platforms. Our programme of expansion will see multi-million Euro expenditure in our 3-year plan to ensure aggressive growth targets are met. The global M2M market continues to grow rapidly and Wireless Logic is ideally placed to support our customers to take advantage of the enormous range of opportunities this technology provides.”
Sunday 13 May 2012
Government-backed Anti-Cybercrime Campaign attracts 80,000 users
A groundbreaking campaign targeting young people about the dangers of internet fraud has attracted over 80,000 users.
It features a web app called The Devil's in Your Details, created by digital agency, roll7. It takes users’ names and profile pictures from Facebook and puts them into a, mock, undercover video report.
The campaign, which is backed by the National Fraud Authority (NFA), aims to raise awareness about online fraud and encourage young people, in particular, to protect their personal information.
The Devil’s in Your Details got further endorsement after tech-lover Stephen Fry tweeted his own video to his 4 million followers.
The campaign website, www.thedevilsinyourdetails.com has been put into the AWS cloud by Databarracks.
“We needed the campaign website to be able to handle bursts of web traffic and have the resources available to deliver personalised videos in the thousands, without compromising speed or performance,” says Jon Parsons, Production Manager at roll7. “The scalability and pricing model offered by AWS, as well as the flexible storage capacity it provides through Amazon S3, won us over”.
roll7 engaged Databarracks, as an AWS Solution Provider, to set up and design the platform, for The Devil’s in Your Details, to best make use of the functionality offered by AWS.
"The campaign has already generated a huge, positive response. Feedback on twitter and other social networks has been fantastic. People are evidently using it and enjoying it," reveals Parsons. “The load balancing and auto-scaling features provided by AWS have enabled us to seamlessly handle a very significant amount of user traffic.”
“All in all, compared with traditional methods, the performance increase is massive and furthermore, AWS is extremely competitive,” adds Parsons.
Attila Narin, Senior Manager, Amazon EU said of the project, “Databarracks has shown how AWS can be used to quickly build a secure, scalable and resilient platform for online campaigns. This is a good example of how organisations no longer need to purchase technology infrastructure up front to handle traffic at its highest peak. They can purchase capacity on demand, when they need it, and when the campaign comes to an end it can be scaled down just as quickly with no wasted expenditure.”
“AWS is perfect for these types of projects,” adds Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks. “Costs are kept low for development and testing purposes by using small server instances, but when the campaign goes viral and traffic skyrockets, you have the power available to keep up.”
Databarracks initially created a test and development environment for roll7 and advised how to architect and configure the campaign’s website for the AWS Cloud.
“This has been a great project to be involved with. Data security is a matter close to our hearts here and The Devil’s in Your Details campaign is a powerful and innovative way to raise awareness.” says Groucutt.
It is estimated over £38 billion is lost within the UK to fraud, with £0.54 billion lost to online ticketing scams and bogus career opportunity offers – types of fraud young people aged 18-25 suffer from the most. (1)(2)
To view The Devil’s In Your Details video click here: http://www.youtube.com/actionfraud
It features a web app called The Devil's in Your Details, created by digital agency, roll7. It takes users’ names and profile pictures from Facebook and puts them into a, mock, undercover video report.
The campaign, which is backed by the National Fraud Authority (NFA), aims to raise awareness about online fraud and encourage young people, in particular, to protect their personal information.
The Devil’s in Your Details got further endorsement after tech-lover Stephen Fry tweeted his own video to his 4 million followers.
The campaign website, www.thedevilsinyourdetails.com has been put into the AWS cloud by Databarracks.
“We needed the campaign website to be able to handle bursts of web traffic and have the resources available to deliver personalised videos in the thousands, without compromising speed or performance,” says Jon Parsons, Production Manager at roll7. “The scalability and pricing model offered by AWS, as well as the flexible storage capacity it provides through Amazon S3, won us over”.
roll7 engaged Databarracks, as an AWS Solution Provider, to set up and design the platform, for The Devil’s in Your Details, to best make use of the functionality offered by AWS.
"The campaign has already generated a huge, positive response. Feedback on twitter and other social networks has been fantastic. People are evidently using it and enjoying it," reveals Parsons. “The load balancing and auto-scaling features provided by AWS have enabled us to seamlessly handle a very significant amount of user traffic.”
“All in all, compared with traditional methods, the performance increase is massive and furthermore, AWS is extremely competitive,” adds Parsons.
Attila Narin, Senior Manager, Amazon EU said of the project, “Databarracks has shown how AWS can be used to quickly build a secure, scalable and resilient platform for online campaigns. This is a good example of how organisations no longer need to purchase technology infrastructure up front to handle traffic at its highest peak. They can purchase capacity on demand, when they need it, and when the campaign comes to an end it can be scaled down just as quickly with no wasted expenditure.”
“AWS is perfect for these types of projects,” adds Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks. “Costs are kept low for development and testing purposes by using small server instances, but when the campaign goes viral and traffic skyrockets, you have the power available to keep up.”
Databarracks initially created a test and development environment for roll7 and advised how to architect and configure the campaign’s website for the AWS Cloud.
“This has been a great project to be involved with. Data security is a matter close to our hearts here and The Devil’s in Your Details campaign is a powerful and innovative way to raise awareness.” says Groucutt.
It is estimated over £38 billion is lost within the UK to fraud, with £0.54 billion lost to online ticketing scams and bogus career opportunity offers – types of fraud young people aged 18-25 suffer from the most. (1)(2)
To view The Devil’s In Your Details video click here: http://www.youtube.com/actionfraud
Kurmi Software Launches UC Provisioning Platform In The UK
Kurmi Software Launches UC Provisioning Platform In The UK
• French software vendor releases multi-vendor platform designed to optimise Unified Communications environments
London, UK, 11th May 2012 – Unified Communications Management software vendor, Kurmi Software, announced today that it will be introducing its two flagship products – Kurmi Unified Provisioning and Kurmi Unified Selfcare - into the UK market. Having created a strong presence in France, Germany, Italy and the Middle East, Kurmi Software is now keen to expand into the UK and is looking for local channel partners to take its products to market.
Kurmi Software offers a unique and comprehensive solution to help with end user deployment and the daily management of Unified Communications (UC) platforms from any location at any time, helping to dramatically reduce administration and improve end-user experience. Hosted through the cloud or on premise, Kurmi Software solutions are interoperable with all other Unified Communications vendor technologies, such as Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Microsoft. The platform can host multiple sites allowing centralised management of UC as a Service (UCaaS) customers or large enterprises with multiple locations. The Kurmi Software suite comprises of two major applications:
• Kurmi Unified Provisioning for administrators dramatically reduces administration by enabling the provisioning of staff into UC environments at the click of a button. The solution leverages advanced user profiling techniques, bringing together multi-vendor environments into one user-intuitive platform and sets access to applications based on job requirements such as voice and telephony, conferencing, messaging, presence, instant messaging and collaboration.
• Kurmi Unified Selfcare for end users improves the end-user experience and reduces pressure on the IT department by helping employees self-manage their UC environment. End-users can handle simple tasks such as managing voicemail, configuring call forward, adding a photo or request PIN code and password resets without the active involvement of the help desk. It also provides an advanced browser based ‘Click to Call’ facility.
Abdel Kander, CEO for Kurmi Software, comments: “According to Gartner , the future of Unified Comms is not in homogenised environments, but in best of breed multi-vendor environments where companies may have telephony from Mitel or Cisco sitting next to messaging and presence from Microsoft and voicemail from another specialised outfit. This is why we have designed our technology to be able to drive all the different systems enabling companies to manage their environments effectively and efficiently.”
The availability of on-demand Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) also eliminates the need to make large upfront investment allowing smaller companies to take advantage of the technology. Kurmi Software’s multi-tenancy capabilities enable service providers to manage numerous customers through a single platform, which is helping service providers to give customers a better user experience while also bringing down the cost for running the service. Kander sees this as a great opportunity, particularly in the UK:
“The UK already has an established and forward thinking UC and SaaS (Software as a Service) model, so we expect this technology to have great traction as the Unified Communications as a Service market starts to take off. Given the fact our technology provides on-premise or cloud-hosted multi-tenancy, branding opportunities and scope for additional services, we see this as an attractive proposition for many Systems Integrators and service providers to resell our product as part of a wider Unified Comms as a Service offering.”
If you are interested in finding out more about Kurmi Software’s partner programme or seeing a product demonstration, please visit the Kurmi Software website at www.kurmi-software.com/en.
• French software vendor releases multi-vendor platform designed to optimise Unified Communications environments
London, UK, 11th May 2012 – Unified Communications Management software vendor, Kurmi Software, announced today that it will be introducing its two flagship products – Kurmi Unified Provisioning and Kurmi Unified Selfcare - into the UK market. Having created a strong presence in France, Germany, Italy and the Middle East, Kurmi Software is now keen to expand into the UK and is looking for local channel partners to take its products to market.
Kurmi Software offers a unique and comprehensive solution to help with end user deployment and the daily management of Unified Communications (UC) platforms from any location at any time, helping to dramatically reduce administration and improve end-user experience. Hosted through the cloud or on premise, Kurmi Software solutions are interoperable with all other Unified Communications vendor technologies, such as Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Microsoft. The platform can host multiple sites allowing centralised management of UC as a Service (UCaaS) customers or large enterprises with multiple locations. The Kurmi Software suite comprises of two major applications:
• Kurmi Unified Provisioning for administrators dramatically reduces administration by enabling the provisioning of staff into UC environments at the click of a button. The solution leverages advanced user profiling techniques, bringing together multi-vendor environments into one user-intuitive platform and sets access to applications based on job requirements such as voice and telephony, conferencing, messaging, presence, instant messaging and collaboration.
• Kurmi Unified Selfcare for end users improves the end-user experience and reduces pressure on the IT department by helping employees self-manage their UC environment. End-users can handle simple tasks such as managing voicemail, configuring call forward, adding a photo or request PIN code and password resets without the active involvement of the help desk. It also provides an advanced browser based ‘Click to Call’ facility.
Abdel Kander, CEO for Kurmi Software, comments: “According to Gartner , the future of Unified Comms is not in homogenised environments, but in best of breed multi-vendor environments where companies may have telephony from Mitel or Cisco sitting next to messaging and presence from Microsoft and voicemail from another specialised outfit. This is why we have designed our technology to be able to drive all the different systems enabling companies to manage their environments effectively and efficiently.”
The availability of on-demand Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) also eliminates the need to make large upfront investment allowing smaller companies to take advantage of the technology. Kurmi Software’s multi-tenancy capabilities enable service providers to manage numerous customers through a single platform, which is helping service providers to give customers a better user experience while also bringing down the cost for running the service. Kander sees this as a great opportunity, particularly in the UK:
“The UK already has an established and forward thinking UC and SaaS (Software as a Service) model, so we expect this technology to have great traction as the Unified Communications as a Service market starts to take off. Given the fact our technology provides on-premise or cloud-hosted multi-tenancy, branding opportunities and scope for additional services, we see this as an attractive proposition for many Systems Integrators and service providers to resell our product as part of a wider Unified Comms as a Service offering.”
If you are interested in finding out more about Kurmi Software’s partner programme or seeing a product demonstration, please visit the Kurmi Software website at www.kurmi-software.com/en.
Wednesday 9 May 2012
Cybher: The event for women who blog
Cybher is the first
all-inclusive female blogger event of its kind in the UK. It’s taking
place on the 12th May 2012 at 8 Northumberland Avenue in the heart of
London. This one-day event will bring together the most influential
bloggers and speakers from all corners of the blogosphere to network,
inspire, share and learn.
Cybher is the brainchild of Siân To who after 15 years PR experience went social when she started blogging in 2009. In January 2010 she founded CyberMummy and in August that year she embarked on a life changing journey as an ambassador for Save the Children, that took her from the slums of Bangladesh to the UN summit in New York and tea at Downing Street.
This vast experience of how to use social media, and how to use it for social good is the foundation of Cybher.
Siân To, said: “We are so proud that Cybher can offer such a variety of workshops and activities for our bloggers to enjoy. Cybher has attracted woman from all blogging genres from beauty and fashion to parenting, travel, politics and more. Not only do these social savvy woman want to learn and develop the core content of their blogs, they also want to connect with brands that reflect their own key values as women.”
Cybher is poised to become the shared platform for bloggers from all walks of life. If you’re a woman and you blog then Cybher is the SOLD OUT event to be seen at.
Speakers include;
Zoe Margolis (Girl with a one track mind), Mario Cacciottolo (Someone Once Told Me), Poppy Disney What I wore today), Liz Scarff (Blogladesh, World Vision), Daryl Willcox (DWPub Media), Mark Solomon (Tales from a black cab), Cate Sevilla (BitchBuzz) and our youngest speaker, the 10 year old Biba (bibasphotos.com).
The Facts. The Stats. The Attendees.
- 70% of all bloggers use their blog to share their expertise and experience with others.
- 36% of all bloggers have been quoted in the traditional media for something they posted on a blog.
- 82% of bloggers surveyed are using Twitter.
- Those who use Twitter say they do so to promote their blog (77%) and bring interesting links/content to light (59%).
- 96% of bloggers have an independent blog. This means they choose who they work with. It could be you.
- The blogosphere is influencing itself - the number one influencer for bloggers is the blogs that they read.
- Almost one third of bloggers have worked for the traditional media. They know how to write and how to engage their audience.
- Compared with other media, blogs continue to lead in terms of trust and generation of consumer recommendations and purchases.
Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011
Cybher is the brainchild of Siân To who after 15 years PR experience went social when she started blogging in 2009. In January 2010 she founded CyberMummy and in August that year she embarked on a life changing journey as an ambassador for Save the Children, that took her from the slums of Bangladesh to the UN summit in New York and tea at Downing Street.
This vast experience of how to use social media, and how to use it for social good is the foundation of Cybher.
Siân To, said: “We are so proud that Cybher can offer such a variety of workshops and activities for our bloggers to enjoy. Cybher has attracted woman from all blogging genres from beauty and fashion to parenting, travel, politics and more. Not only do these social savvy woman want to learn and develop the core content of their blogs, they also want to connect with brands that reflect their own key values as women.”
Cybher is poised to become the shared platform for bloggers from all walks of life. If you’re a woman and you blog then Cybher is the SOLD OUT event to be seen at.
Speakers include;
Zoe Margolis (Girl with a one track mind), Mario Cacciottolo (Someone Once Told Me), Poppy Disney What I wore today), Liz Scarff (Blogladesh, World Vision), Daryl Willcox (DWPub Media), Mark Solomon (Tales from a black cab), Cate Sevilla (BitchBuzz) and our youngest speaker, the 10 year old Biba (bibasphotos.com).
The Facts. The Stats. The Attendees.
- 70% of all bloggers use their blog to share their expertise and experience with others.
- 36% of all bloggers have been quoted in the traditional media for something they posted on a blog.
- 82% of bloggers surveyed are using Twitter.
- Those who use Twitter say they do so to promote their blog (77%) and bring interesting links/content to light (59%).
- 96% of bloggers have an independent blog. This means they choose who they work with. It could be you.
- The blogosphere is influencing itself - the number one influencer for bloggers is the blogs that they read.
- Almost one third of bloggers have worked for the traditional media. They know how to write and how to engage their audience.
- Compared with other media, blogs continue to lead in terms of trust and generation of consumer recommendations and purchases.
Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011
Centrix helps enterprises apply right flavour of virtualisation with new analytics in WorkSpace iQ
With Centrix WorkSpace iQ IT decision-makers gain fast access to unparalleled intelligence on users, applications, devices and IT consumption patterns to ensure technology investments are fully optimized to user environments. The latest version of WorkSpace iQ introduces:
WorkSpace Designer for Citrix– project teams can quickly and easily analyse the existing end-user computing infrastructure in preparation for employing the right combination of Citrix desktop virtualisation technologies. The WorkSpace Designer covers initial analysis through detailed capacity planning for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp infrastructure deployments, including:
Initial analysis of users to determine the best virtualization choices for desktop delivery based on their work-style.
In depth analysis of application usage, including the ability to sort applications by total use and filter by business groups, locations and sessions.
Analysis of which applications need to be deployed on both Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp platforms and the associated compatibility status, including integration with Citrix AppDNA Apptitude.
Capacity planning for the final deployment based on application allocation by platform, user requirements and core infrastructure components such as SAN capacity.
User Virtualisation Overview Report – provides unique insight into user workstyles, enabling project teams to design and deploy user virtualisation in the most effective method. Capabilities include:
User consumption patterns of both applications and data, including total data storage by user and data transfer metrics.
Unparalleled login statistics.
Easy identification of top application usage, enabled by WorkSpace iQ’s patent-pending application matching technology.
Identification of where applications require administrative rights enabling the most efficient user-policy design.
A ‘One Click’ Data Summary Report that makes it easy for customers and partners to integrate the application and asset usage intelligence captured by WorkSpace iQ with other desktop and IT management systems in use, such as software licensing tools, to support wider user-centric technology decision-making.
“User environments are highly dynamic. In large organisations, the scale of the user base and the diversity of technology use can make it difficult for IT teams to plan architecture or application change without impacting on productivity or the user experience,” said Paul Burke, director of products, Centrix Software.
“WorkSpace iQ addresses this challenge, making it easy for IT decision-makers to understand the user environments and which application delivery options best suit their needs. The latest updates provide new capabilities for IT teams designing Citrix environments and virtualisation projects that drives dramatic cost reductions and performance improvements.”
“Customers are increasingly looking to separate their users from applications and devices in order to deliver the flexibility and mobility demanded by today’s workforce” said Neil O’Donoghue, Director of Professional Services at AppSense. “Understanding the current consumer-centric work environment is a critical starting point for making the right transformation decisions and Centrix Software is providing the richest, deepest understanding of users, their work patterns and how data and applications are accessed. This provides unique invaluable insight for any customer looking to transform and virtualize their users.”
“When you deploy desktop and application virtualization, you need continuous insight and visibility across the user environment and infrastructure, or your deployment is going to fail," said Rachel Chalmers, Research director, Infrastructure Computing for the Enterprise at The 451 Group. "Analytics plays a key role here. It helps organizations map the most appropriate virtualization technologies to each user based on how they work. This user-centric approach encourages users to adopt new technologies - and by the way, it saves money and gives central IT better controls."
FACTFILE:
Headquartered in Newbury, UK, with the US corporate office in Framingham, MA, Centrix Software provides award-winning workspace computing solutions that optimize the way IT infrastructures deliver applications and content provisioned from physical, virtual, web or hosted platforms. By enabling a user-centric approach to IT service delivery, Centrix Software helps its customers to be more agile, flexible and efficient in how they deliver client-side technology services. Centrix Software’s solutions have helped leading organizations in banking and securities, insurance, telecommunications, retail, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, energy and utilities, and the public sector. For more information please visit www.centrixsoftware.com.
For the latest information on Centrix Software
• Centrix Software Twitter
• Centrix Software YouTube channel
• Centrix Software Facebook page
Gadgets, gizmos and tablets on the rise - but what next?
With the on-going development in technology and rise in the use of electronic tablets, Endsleigh Insurance is running a series of polls through its latest Facebook campaign, Fantime Friday. Recent poll results revealed that more and more people are using multiple electronic gadgets to digitally communicate.
With 61% of the nation now owning one, Endsleigh’s most recent survey concluded that the laptop is currently the public’s most favourable device. Survey results also established that a quarter of people across the nation are now using multiple electronic devices to communicate online, including a rise in the use of tablets as an addition to their home and work computer systems.
Proving successful, the poll is part of a wider Facebook campaign, aimed at reminding students of the importance of insurance. The campaign ‘Fantime Friday’ offers people the chance to win a series of gadgets and gizmos through interacting on the Facebook page, where they can also take part in polls and get information on latest news and offer.
Mike Day, of Endsleigh Insurance, said: “With the rise in use of tablets and people owning multiple expensive gadgets, it’s so important to have home insurance or some form of contents insurance on expensive goods, our results clearly show how owning expensive gadgets has become the norm for most people across the UK, and with technology developing at such a fast pace this will continue to increase, it’s important for expensive items such as iPads, laptops and other gadgets to be covered by insurance to reassure customers that they are safe in certain situations.”
Over the past decade tablets have been a huge subject of discussion, two years ago saw the launch of the first generation iPad, and since then technology has developed faster than a bolt of lightning, the market has been rife with competitors developing electronic tablets to rival the ever popular device which has taken the digital world by storm, but Endsleigh’s new data shows that tablets are not being used alone. None of the respondents surveyed owned a tablet without owning another computer device, so where does this put us in the future?
We think tablets are here to stay. The world may not be ready for the takeover by tablets, but as technology continues to develop, iPads and other similar devices are bound to overtake laptops and position themselves as most owned gadget.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
WOMEN IN GAMING Networking Event starts Judging process for WiG Awards 2012
WOMEN IN GAMING Networking Event starts Judging process for WiG Awards
WOMEN IN GAMING (WiG) 2012 third networking and awards event http://www.gaming-awards.com has announced that the judging process is about to begin. After receiving a high volume of notable nominees from across the global gaming sector, the Women in Gaming (WiG) prestigious judges are set to carefully assess who they think are leading, inspirational women in gaming, visit those in the running here: www.gaming-awards.com/wignominees2012.html
The glitzy gala of women who have dynamically stayed two-steps ahead of their male counterparts will have the chance to shine in their spotlight at the sophisticated Jumeirah Carlton Tower, Knightsbridge, London on the 27 June 2012. It’s set to be an event to remember!
The conference will be at the heart of WiG, as prominent industry experts explore insightful topics such as how social media can be fully utilized within the business world and the evolution of technology, including how mobile optimization is integrating itself into the gaming world…topics that we can all apply within our industry. The leader panel discussion will also take a look at where gaming will be going next. The aim of the conference is to spark debate and discussion within an evolving gaming world. For more details about the conference, visit http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-conference2012.html.
The prestigious panel includes high-flyers such as Gloria Irwin, Founder of Gaming & Hospitability Industry Professionals Association, Lyndsey Barrett, Director of Operations from The Ritz Club, London, Sue Schneider, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the internet gaming industry and Tracy Cohen, marketing manager for TCSJOHNHUXLEY. These are just some of the high-caliber women joining Women in Gaming 2012. More information about the impressive line-up of judges can be found here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-awards2012.html
The Women in Gaming Speakers include industry experts such as Anna Conley-Bingo/Ops Manager William Hill, Britt Boeskov COO of Unibet, Claire Tribert from Sportingbet, Daniela (Attard) Castillo - Betfair, Linda Lewis - Aspers Group, Stella Dalton from Gamcare, Hillevi Stuhrenberg from Betssons, Fiona Regan from Rank, and many more professionals. More details about the speakers can be found here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-conference2012.html
The judges will carefully select deserving winners from the following competitive categories.
Hidden Talent of the Year
Star of the Future Award
Leader of the Year Award (iGaming)
Leader of the Year (Landbased)
Team of the Year Award (iGaming)
Team of the Year (Land based)
Industry Achiever of the Year
Inspiration of the Year
Affiliate Manager of the Year Award
Innovator of the Year Award
The Industry Pride of the Year Award
Man Championing Women in Business Award
More information can be viewed here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-awards2012.html
Women in Gaming 2012 is supporting ‘Break Through Breast Cancer.’
Last year, attendees told us that “the calibre of the female influencers throughout the industry blew us away” and this year is set to be bigger and better with women being recognised again, for their wealth of knowledge, power and perseverance. Others described it as “one of the best conferences” that they have ever been to.
WOMEN IN GAMING (WiG) 2012 third networking and awards event http://www.gaming-awards.com has announced that the judging process is about to begin. After receiving a high volume of notable nominees from across the global gaming sector, the Women in Gaming (WiG) prestigious judges are set to carefully assess who they think are leading, inspirational women in gaming, visit those in the running here: www.gaming-awards.com/wignominees2012.html
The glitzy gala of women who have dynamically stayed two-steps ahead of their male counterparts will have the chance to shine in their spotlight at the sophisticated Jumeirah Carlton Tower, Knightsbridge, London on the 27 June 2012. It’s set to be an event to remember!
The conference will be at the heart of WiG, as prominent industry experts explore insightful topics such as how social media can be fully utilized within the business world and the evolution of technology, including how mobile optimization is integrating itself into the gaming world…topics that we can all apply within our industry. The leader panel discussion will also take a look at where gaming will be going next. The aim of the conference is to spark debate and discussion within an evolving gaming world. For more details about the conference, visit http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-conference2012.html.
The prestigious panel includes high-flyers such as Gloria Irwin, Founder of Gaming & Hospitability Industry Professionals Association, Lyndsey Barrett, Director of Operations from The Ritz Club, London, Sue Schneider, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the internet gaming industry and Tracy Cohen, marketing manager for TCSJOHNHUXLEY. These are just some of the high-caliber women joining Women in Gaming 2012. More information about the impressive line-up of judges can be found here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-awards2012.html
The Women in Gaming Speakers include industry experts such as Anna Conley-Bingo/Ops Manager William Hill, Britt Boeskov COO of Unibet, Claire Tribert from Sportingbet, Daniela (Attard) Castillo - Betfair, Linda Lewis - Aspers Group, Stella Dalton from Gamcare, Hillevi Stuhrenberg from Betssons, Fiona Regan from Rank, and many more professionals. More details about the speakers can be found here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-conference2012.html
The judges will carefully select deserving winners from the following competitive categories.
Hidden Talent of the Year
Star of the Future Award
Leader of the Year Award (iGaming)
Leader of the Year (Landbased)
Team of the Year Award (iGaming)
Team of the Year (Land based)
Industry Achiever of the Year
Inspiration of the Year
Affiliate Manager of the Year Award
Innovator of the Year Award
The Industry Pride of the Year Award
Man Championing Women in Business Award
More information can be viewed here: http://www.gaming-awards.com/wig-awards2012.html
Women in Gaming 2012 is supporting ‘Break Through Breast Cancer.’
Last year, attendees told us that “the calibre of the female influencers throughout the industry blew us away” and this year is set to be bigger and better with women being recognised again, for their wealth of knowledge, power and perseverance. Others described it as “one of the best conferences” that they have ever been to.
Thursday 3 May 2012
GFI Software Combines Antivirus and Anti-Spam Protection in GFI MailEssentials™ 2012 for Email Threat Protection
As organisations continue to
battle spam and phishing attacks, GFI offers a dedicated email security
solution to manage the daily onslaught of malware-laden messages
In order to help small to medium-sized businesses in the fight against email-borne threats, GFI® Software today announced the availability of GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection. The solution features robust anti-spam functionality, now combined with up to five virus detection engines, including the award-winning GFI VIPRE® antivirus, to give SMBs comprehensive protection against phishing, spam and virus-carrying emails.
Email is a critical business function that is also a conduit through which malware can enter an organisation and wreak havoc. A continuing battle for organisations of all sizes, spam emails represent over 70% of all emails sent on a daily basis and a recent GFI survey of SMBs found that nearly half of respondents (44%) had suffered a data breach as a direct result of email-borne malware. 84% of those surveyed said the volume of spam in their organisation had either increased (52%) or remained the same (32%) in the past year.
One of the main reasons SMEs are still struggling with the influx is that 48% simply rely on the anti-spam component of their antivirus solution to block spam, rather than employing a dedicated email security solution. GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection combines GFI’s top email security technologies to deliver a spam capture rate greater than 99% with low false positives and multiple antivirus engines, mitigating the risks associated with malware-laden email.
To help SMEs protect their networks and intellectual property from email-based threats, GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection has bolstered its robust anti-spam and anti-phishing capabilities by adding GFI VIPRE and Bitdefender virus scanning engines to its protection capabilities. For heightened protection, administrators may also license additional engines from Kaspersky Lab, McAfee and Norman. By integrating robust virus detection into GFI MailEssentials, IT administrators can now deploy a complete, easy-to-use email security solution, all managed from a single, redesigned and intuitive, web-based dashboard.
Existing GFI MailEssentials customers* will be able to easily upgrade to GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection and enjoy the same reliable spam detection they have come to value and expect, together with the benefit of award-winning antivirus capabilities. Similarly, GFI MailSecurity* customers will be able to upgrade to GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection and avail themselves of top-notch spam filtering in addition to the robust email security they have grown accustomed to.
GFI MailEssentials Unified Protection also provides:
• Flexible and granular user-based attachment and keyword filtering
• Advanced content filtering
• Added email security through Trojan and email exploit detection and HTML sanitation
• Powerful email reporting capabilities
“It is clear that email-borne threats are as dangerous as ever, and although spam is not a new problem, it is one that SMEs still need to adequately address,” said Phil Bousfield, general manager, Infrastructure business unit, at GFI Software.
“Spammers and malware writers are well aware that even the most savvy end-user can be fooled into clicking a link in an email and infecting their computer or entire company network. GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection gives administrators more peace of mind, knowing that far fewer spam and virus-carrying emails will make it to end user mailboxes.”
“SME administrators want solutions that provide robust features and capabilities without requiring heavy management and time commitments,” continued Bousfield. “With GFI MailEssentials UnifiedProtection, they will be getting a powerful, complete, best-in-class email security solution that allows them to spend more time addressing the needs of their end users and less time worrying about them clicking on malicious links contained within their emails.”
To learn more about GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection, visit
http://www.gfi.com/exchange-server-antispam-antivirus or email sales@gfi.com.
* GFI MailEssentials 2012 is also available in Anti-Spam and EmailSecurity editions.
In order to help small to medium-sized businesses in the fight against email-borne threats, GFI® Software today announced the availability of GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection. The solution features robust anti-spam functionality, now combined with up to five virus detection engines, including the award-winning GFI VIPRE® antivirus, to give SMBs comprehensive protection against phishing, spam and virus-carrying emails.
Email is a critical business function that is also a conduit through which malware can enter an organisation and wreak havoc. A continuing battle for organisations of all sizes, spam emails represent over 70% of all emails sent on a daily basis and a recent GFI survey of SMBs found that nearly half of respondents (44%) had suffered a data breach as a direct result of email-borne malware. 84% of those surveyed said the volume of spam in their organisation had either increased (52%) or remained the same (32%) in the past year.
One of the main reasons SMEs are still struggling with the influx is that 48% simply rely on the anti-spam component of their antivirus solution to block spam, rather than employing a dedicated email security solution. GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection combines GFI’s top email security technologies to deliver a spam capture rate greater than 99% with low false positives and multiple antivirus engines, mitigating the risks associated with malware-laden email.
To help SMEs protect their networks and intellectual property from email-based threats, GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection has bolstered its robust anti-spam and anti-phishing capabilities by adding GFI VIPRE and Bitdefender virus scanning engines to its protection capabilities. For heightened protection, administrators may also license additional engines from Kaspersky Lab, McAfee and Norman. By integrating robust virus detection into GFI MailEssentials, IT administrators can now deploy a complete, easy-to-use email security solution, all managed from a single, redesigned and intuitive, web-based dashboard.
Existing GFI MailEssentials customers* will be able to easily upgrade to GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection and enjoy the same reliable spam detection they have come to value and expect, together with the benefit of award-winning antivirus capabilities. Similarly, GFI MailSecurity* customers will be able to upgrade to GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection and avail themselves of top-notch spam filtering in addition to the robust email security they have grown accustomed to.
GFI MailEssentials Unified Protection also provides:
• Flexible and granular user-based attachment and keyword filtering
• Advanced content filtering
• Added email security through Trojan and email exploit detection and HTML sanitation
• Powerful email reporting capabilities
“It is clear that email-borne threats are as dangerous as ever, and although spam is not a new problem, it is one that SMEs still need to adequately address,” said Phil Bousfield, general manager, Infrastructure business unit, at GFI Software.
“Spammers and malware writers are well aware that even the most savvy end-user can be fooled into clicking a link in an email and infecting their computer or entire company network. GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection gives administrators more peace of mind, knowing that far fewer spam and virus-carrying emails will make it to end user mailboxes.”
“SME administrators want solutions that provide robust features and capabilities without requiring heavy management and time commitments,” continued Bousfield. “With GFI MailEssentials UnifiedProtection, they will be getting a powerful, complete, best-in-class email security solution that allows them to spend more time addressing the needs of their end users and less time worrying about them clicking on malicious links contained within their emails.”
To learn more about GFI MailEssentials 2012 UnifiedProtection, visit
http://www.gfi.com/exchange-server-antispam-antivirus or email sales@gfi.com.
* GFI MailEssentials 2012 is also available in Anti-Spam and EmailSecurity editions.
That's Home and Household: New Virgin Media deals could save householders hun...
That's Home and Household: New Virgin Media deals could save householders hun...: A new deal from Virgin Media offers new customers up to £60 off across its range of broadband, TV and phone packages and bundles until 24/...
ekmSiteBuilder.com – new and improved website creation
ekmSiteBuilder.com, a simple to use website creation solution allows anybody to set up their own professional website quickly and easily.
The new version of ekmSiteBuilder.com has some pretty nifty features under the bonnet too – including a ‘product catalogue’ mode and a single click ecommerce upgrade for those who might want to sell online at some point in the future.
Nick Stansfield, Head Developer at Ekm Systems comments: “The new version of ekmSiteBuilder.com is now built on the same code base as ekmPowershop.com - so any customers using our market leading ecommerce platform will feel very familiar with our new version of ekmSiteBuilder.com – as they’re built on the same foundations.
That’s what makes the ecommerce upgrade possible, something a lot of our customers on ekmSiteBuilder.com were asking for as they advanced their online presence. ekmSiteBuilder.com now offers customers an easy to use website creation tool that’s future proofed, if or when they decide to sell online. It’s also resulted in a complete interface overhaul and a swathe of brand new templates, which is a vast improvement on the old version.”
Setting up your own website can be a tricky task with poor end results, or big budget requirements for an end product that looks something close to professional. ekmSiteBuilder.com tackles the cost, the looks and latest technologies whilst providing an intuitive user interface. This delivers the power of professional website creation to anybody with an internet connection, for just £9.99 per month.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
That's Business: Swyx starts referral campaign for end customers
That's Business: Swyx starts referral campaign for end customers: New customer recommendation – New iPad! Swyx , a vendor of Unified Communications (UC) for SMEs is rewarding each new succ...
That's Health: NHS Scotland goes live with Advanced Health & Care...
That's Health: NHS Scotland goes live with Advanced Health & Care...: Adastra out-of-hours patient management system is now used across all Scotland Tayside,...
Centrix Software Named ″Cool Vendor″ by Analyst Firm
Centrix Software, provider of workspace computing solutions today announced it
has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the Client Computing
report by Gartner, Inc.
Centrix Software features in the new report, released by distinguished analysts Terrence Cosgrove, Federica Troni, Mark A. Margevicius and Nathan Hill, for its Centrix WorkSpace solution, which provides enterprise organizations with the ability to analyze end-user computing environments at a user level and aggregate the delivery of diverse applications and content to create flexible workspaces.
“We are delighted to be recognized by Gartner. We believe this affirms the value we bring to enterprise organizations and our technical innovation,” said Lisa Hammond, CEO of Centrix Software. “Corporate IT is undergoing unprecedented change, driven by a number of disruptive technologies and approaches such as virtualization, cloud and mobile computing, and the impact of user-led technology demands. Since we started Centrix Software, we have set out to help these organizations benefit from the new opportunities these technologies bring, while maintaining the governance they require to support their day-to-day business. We are excited to be part of a new wave of thinking about how we use, consume and deliver business technology more efficiently and effectively.”
Centrix WorkSpace enables organizations to meter and monitor how they consume technology so that they can eliminate overspend on IT and make more informed decisions about the selection and deployment of new technology approaches, such as virtualization, cloud computing, Windows 7 migrations and bring your own device (BYOD) programs. It also provides organizations with the ability to create self-service digital workspaces for users, which support all types of application delivery, and govern both the use of new cloud-based application delivery models such as software-as-a-service and the growing diversity of content and devices emerging in today’s modern enterprise.
To request a copy of the Gartner report, please go to: http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=260&mo...
Centrix Software features in the new report, released by distinguished analysts Terrence Cosgrove, Federica Troni, Mark A. Margevicius and Nathan Hill, for its Centrix WorkSpace solution, which provides enterprise organizations with the ability to analyze end-user computing environments at a user level and aggregate the delivery of diverse applications and content to create flexible workspaces.
“We are delighted to be recognized by Gartner. We believe this affirms the value we bring to enterprise organizations and our technical innovation,” said Lisa Hammond, CEO of Centrix Software. “Corporate IT is undergoing unprecedented change, driven by a number of disruptive technologies and approaches such as virtualization, cloud and mobile computing, and the impact of user-led technology demands. Since we started Centrix Software, we have set out to help these organizations benefit from the new opportunities these technologies bring, while maintaining the governance they require to support their day-to-day business. We are excited to be part of a new wave of thinking about how we use, consume and deliver business technology more efficiently and effectively.”
Centrix WorkSpace enables organizations to meter and monitor how they consume technology so that they can eliminate overspend on IT and make more informed decisions about the selection and deployment of new technology approaches, such as virtualization, cloud computing, Windows 7 migrations and bring your own device (BYOD) programs. It also provides organizations with the ability to create self-service digital workspaces for users, which support all types of application delivery, and govern both the use of new cloud-based application delivery models such as software-as-a-service and the growing diversity of content and devices emerging in today’s modern enterprise.
To request a copy of the Gartner report, please go to: http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=260&mo...
That's Business: Total Retail Control Ltd., Selected as LightSpeed ...
That's Business: Total Retail Control Ltd., Selected as LightSpeed ...: LightSpeed provides retailers with a robust, interactive retail system that leverages Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and ...
Tuesday 1 May 2012
TDSA appoints Complete IT Systems as its first UK reseller for Media4Display
CIT was recently crowned Yorkshire's fastest growing medium-sized business following research conducted by Bradford University School of Management. The company specialises in providing private and public sector organisations with IT and digital signage systems.
Chris Charlesworth, Audio Visual Solutions Specialist at CIT, said “Media4Display network and content management software is proven in multinational retailers and corporates. It offers an outstanding level of technical sophistication that can help organisations distribute and manage all types of media content to their display screens, PC’s, tablets, kiosks and POS stations within one system. We have the expertise to advise private and public sector clients how to optimise their use of this system.”
TDSA’s partnership with CIT is part of its initiative to distribute Media4Display throughout the UK via specialist resellers. James Washer, Managing Director of TDSA, said “We are very pleased to announce this partnership with CIT. They have a strong management team with extensive IT experience and contacts that will help our clients leverage their investment in digital signage to maximum effect using Media4Display.”
TDSA’s group has over a quarter century of experience in retail and corporate display. The company specialises in providing retailers and corporates with solutions that underpin “best practice” in digital signage management. Its services are focussed on helping marketing professionals improve the quality, consistency and effectiveness of their digital content and distribution processes.
Telelogos, the software editor for Media4Display has over 300,000 user licences operating worldwide. The software commands a 60% share of French retail stores. TDSA plans for Media 4Display to become a leading platform in the UK digital signage market.
For details you can visit www.thedsagency.co.uk and www.cit-sys.co.uk More information about the Media4Display system is at www.software-digital-signage.com.
Advanced Computer Software Group plc acquires Fabric Technologies for £4.6m
Fabric, which provides managed services and unified communication solutions to approximately 160 UK mid-market customers in banking and other professional services sectors, will be integrated over the coming months into the Group’s Advanced 365 Managed Services division based in City Road, London.
Vin Murria, Chief Executive of Advanced Computer Software Group, comments, “This acquisition forms part of the Group’s strategy to identify and acquire high quality complementary businesses to strengthen our 365 Managed Services division. Fabric’s market-leading offerings will help drive further cross-selling of managed services into the Group’s 7,000 strong customer base.”
The acquisition of Fabric strengthens Advanced 365’s managed services portfolio and provides a new unified communications offering to Advanced’s customer base. Unified communications brings together desktop phones, mobile phones, email, voicemail, SMS text messaging and instant messaging, ensuring that the person being contacted knows that someone is trying to reach them, regardless of communications channel and location.
The integration of Fabric into the Advanced 365 division also creates one of the UK’s biggest Microsoft partners.
www.advancedcomputersoftware.com
How visualisation uncovers the big picture of ‘Big Data’
Dr Rupert Ogilvie outlines how visualising your data can be the key to successfully managing it
Dr Rupert Ogilvie, Optimisation Consultant at Intergence, an IT optimisation consultancy based in Cambridge, has outlined how data visualisation can help manage Big Data that is often too unwieldy to capture, manage, and process within a reasonable amount of time.
According to Gartner, Big Data is “…the volume, variety and velocity of structured and unstructured data pouring through networks into processors and storage devices, along with the conversion of such data into business advice for enterprises.”
A recent report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) 1, suggests that improved use of this Big Data could add £216 billion to the UK economy and create 58,000 jobs. Data visualisation can be a key tool in helping users explore and communicate data through graphic representations – enabling collaborating, inferring connections and drawing conclusions that benefit business’ bottom line.
Big Data is the convergence of three v’s: volume, variety and velocity and standard data management techniques can be appropriate for data which reflects just one of the v’s – for example, enormous datasets can be elegantly handled by well configured relational databases and variety and velocity can be handled by good process management and conventional BI practices. However, Big Data management has to juggle the convergence of all three.
‘The Cloud’ is often talked about in the same breath as Big Data. But what is it about the cloud that makes it so appealing to those looking to utilise their Big Data? [It is important to remember that the notion of a cloud does not necessarily mean a public cloud such as Amazon EC2 or a SaaS service like SalesForce - but can be applied to any internal shared resource platform (private cloud) or mixture of the two (hybrid)].
Scalability is a big plus point for Big Data and the cloud – if the real-time feeds providing data suddenly rocket in volume due to an external event, the cloud can provision and utilise resources at speed, minimising the risk of data loss. Although all the data can in theory be stored in the cloud, the organisation using it can choose how much it needs to pull back for presentation and further analysis.
This flexibility in resource usage can be a problem for organisations – either when planning their upgrade path or when budgeting for their next cloud bill. Visualisation can help these organisations look at what was used and when, as well as tracking the usage trends over time for the future proofing of their private clouds.
Data Visualisation is all about telling a story – and Big Data visualisation is no different. As should be clear by now, any effort at tackling Big Data can potentially involve billions of data points which need to be woven together into business stories.
Tackling the 3 Vs
Often what is valuable in the data isn’t just the hard numbers, but the trends – how they change over time. Visualisation is an invaluable tool in identifying trends within massive data sets, spotting anomalies as well as outliers and providing a common framework in which to view the data from the many different data sources.
Visualising Volume
Visualisation allows the user to cut into and move between different granularities of data. From a high level overview the user can drill down to those nuggets of data - which previously would have been discarded – to searched out answers and perform deeper analysis on the data. Subsetting and grouping can reduce the data density allowing rapid summaries of different sections of the data, helping the user find the right level of information. Once they have found the main data set they required, they can manipulate it and drill down, identifying the underlying raw data and its sources.
Visualising Velocity
Do you need static and real-time views on your data? Visualisation can show the state of a network or process at a single point, as well as stream the data to you in real time. Using advanced visualisation techniques it is possible to replay/rewind data to hunt back looking for the root cause of problems and how trends shift over time. If a process has multiple inputs from different data sources it is possible to quickly see if the various inputs in a process are being updated with sufficient regularity. When planning new processes and thresholds, the ability to pull up views showing the velocity of the needed sources can provide a valuable insight into the amount of work required to scrub and clean the data.
Visualising Variety
Having a common view on the data removes the worries associated with the different structured and semi-structured raw data. Having this template allows an organisation to have confidence that as new data sources become available, the data that they provide will fit seamlessly with minimum change required. As well as assisting with this common framework visualisation will allow an organisation to overlay and combine data from different sources in different views for different levels of an organisation and departments. Having a common visualisation tool for the whole organisation provides a solid collaboration and communication platform helping improve user work flows.
Intergence is exhibiting at the IDC event ‘Evolution of the Datacentre Conference’ on Tuesday 22 May, 2012. For more information, click here.
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