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ekmSiteBuilder.com – new and improved website creation

The nation’s favourite ecommerce and website provider have launched a new and improved version of ekmSiteBuilder.com this week, boasting a new interface, new stunning templates and extra features.

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.

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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...

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TDSA appoints Complete IT Systems as its first UK reseller for Media4Display

The Digital Signage Agency (TDSA), the UK distributor of Media4Display digital signage management software, has today appointed Complete IT Systems (CIT), an IT and digital signage services provider, as its first UK reseller. CIT will now sell, implement and support Media4Display throughout the UK in both SaaS and on-premise solutions.

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

Advanced Computer Software Group plc (Advanced), a leading provider of healthcare and business management software and services, today announces the acquisition of London-based managed services provider, Fabric Technologies Limited (Fabric), for a total cash consideration of £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’

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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